The Ticking Crocodile
by Miss Melpomene
Summary: The expectation of drowning was optimistic, she thought. That was only if she missed the rocks, which as Dwayne pointed out was unlikely given her current trajectory. What was likely was that she'd die. Her body would be smashed on the rocks like a baby bird, her brief life as a half-vampire cut shorter because Dwayne couldn't take a joke. Part 2 of the West Coast Vampires Saga.
1. Prologue (A Goddamn Vampire Moot)

****DISCLAIMER: The places and characters featured hereinafter are the property of Warner Bros., Joel Shumacher, Janice Fischer, James Jeremias, and Jeffrey Boam and no attempt is being made by the author to claim ownership or profit from the use of the aforementioned characters. The views represented herein do not necessarily represent the views of the original authors and any character names or places mentioned in the original works belong to the copyright holders and are used in this story for nonprofit entertainment purposes by an amateur writer. The original characters used in this story are the creative property of Miss Melpomene (parting writing credit goes to my brother) and are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental.****

* * *

 _For my sister, without whom a sequel would never have been possible because I might never have finished the first one without her, and my brother, who practically wrote this one._

* * *

" _I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us."_

* * *

Prologue

* * *

The room was lit with the sterile white intensity of an operating room and furnished with the same warmth and expectation of visitors as a morgue, as if the vampires were afraid the mere stereotype of a poorly lit, ornately furnished Dracula lair would attract unwanted attention. The table was round, an unsubtle reminder to those that sat at it that they were all equals, from the only one at the table who actually believed that.

The vampire who sat at what would be the head of the table was understatedly handsome with robust, dark eyebrows. His dark hair, swept neatly back from his forehead, was the same color as pencil graphite and the dark gray suspenders he wore. His lighter colored dress shirt was unbuttoned to the second button, and he wasn't wearing a tie. "You know Max isn't directly responsible for this situation," he said.

The vampire to his left was a woman, of approximately the same age as him, though she carried it better, with an aristocratic nose and egg-white blonde hair styled in a classic chignon. She wore an ivory blouse that was made of a soft, liquidy material like silk or satin, and white, wide leg linen pants, tapping her short burgundy colored acrylic nails on a bourbon glass. The amber liquid was tinted red from the blood she mixed in like soda water. "No," a single piece of hair was carefully pulled out so it framed the left side of her face attractively, and it stayed in place perfectly even when she moved her head. "but his inability to control his progeny _has_ exacerbated it." She tapped the large ring on her index finger on the rim of her glass. "Teenage boys need what Max is either unwilling or incapable of providing." She ran her hand over the soft buzzcut of the 6'7" brick shithouse of a vampire sitting immediately to her right, but not at the table. He could have been fifteen or twenty-five, it was impossible to tell, with eyes that were so brown they were almost black and the neutral expression of someone who was either waiting to kill everyone else in the room or incredibly bored on his face. "A mother's touch."

The twelve-year-old vampire to her left had neatly trimmed light brown hair and dark purple circles like bruises under both of his eyes that made him look like he hadn't slept in a century, which for all anyone knew might have been the case. His chair was pulled up flush with the table so his clavicle was pressed against the edge of it, and he wore a dark blazer and dress shirt, and a sour look. "This has nothing to do with Max and you know it."

"I disagree," the woman said without turning to look at him, still petting the tall, broad-shouldered vampire on her right like he was a dog lying obediently across her feet. "it has everything to do with Max, my dear."

"Santa Carla can't handle a group that size." Sat directly across from her was a late thirties Korean vampire with cheekbones you could dance on, and a black tee shirt that cut into his biceps noticeably, though maybe that was the point. A point which was obviously lost on him, because they were all vampires, and every one of them could break the heavy wooden table with one hand, even the one who looked like a twelve-year old.

"Eight now," the vampire to his right was a pretty sort of plain, with pin straight ash blonde hair and very straight, long nose. She was wearing high-waisted black slacks and a sleeveless white blouse that wasn't nearly as nice of quality as the one the other blonde woman was wearing. Her legs were crossed at the knee and she wasn't touching the table, her right forearm lying on the thigh that was on top, and her left hand resting on her right wrist. "including Max."

"We're getting off track." The vampire with the thick eyebrows said mildly, tapping the side of his hand on the table. Though it was incredibly quiet, even by their standards as vampires, it was as effective as banging a gavel in a library. The only ones who didn't look at him was the vampire who towered over them all even while sitting, and the twelve-year old vampire who was bouncing his leg nervously, staring at the fine grain of the table and shaking his head incessantly.

"And let's not forget," the Korean vampire hit the table pointlessly if it was to get their attention, because they were all already listening. "Patrick was Max's problem first and it's because of him that our coyote is back on the west coast in the first place." Agreement went around the table from everyone but the vampire at the "head" of the table, and the twelve-year old vampire.

"Dutton hasn't been west of Kansas in a decade," the former said gently. "are we even sure it's him?"

The Korean vampire snorted. "Some of us are old enough to remember the last time a single human got this uppity." He glanced sidelong sarcastically at the twelve-year-old vampire. " _I'm_ sure."

The twelve-year-old vampire didn't take the bait. "Speaking as the only one sitting at this table who's actually met the man personally, this isn't just another uppity human we're dealing with."

"Raymond is right." The vampire with the Groucho Marx eyebrows said, wringing his left hand anxiously. "This is bigger than Max." One chair at the table was noticeably empty and he glanced sidelong at it. "Patrick drew attention to all of us."

The woman laughed like someone hitting an empty champagne flute with a fork. "How convenient then that he should be killed by a _human_ before we could deal with him and escape all punishment."

"That's enough, Sadie," the vampire with the thick eyebrows said with a prolonged sigh.

"It's not nearly," Sadie replied. " _Simon_." She added coyly, taking a slow sip of her blood and bourbon. Even the ice stayed at the bottom of the glass rather than touch her.

"Max is not on trial," Simon said carefully. Despite that, Max's absence was still painfully evident, the empty chair to Simon's right where he should have been sat was pushed in, but it still felt intentional, no matter what Simon said.

"How convenient again," Sadie said mildly.

"Enough," Raymond, the twelve-year-old vampire said with an emphasis on the two halves of the word that made it sound like two separate words. "you're all dead. Dutton's going to kill all of you."

"Why are you even here?" The Korean vampire snapped instantly, like he had been itching to say something ever since the twelve-year old vampire sat down at the table.

"Because I asked Sadie to bring him," Simon said. "because he's the only one who has personal experience with Dutton."

"And how'd that turn out for you, huh, Raymond?" The Korean vampire asked. "You run away instead of just dealing with him?"

"Obviously, because unlike you I actually have a brain in my head," Raymond said mildly.

The Korean vampire stood up and Simon sighed "sit down, Park."

"There is no _dealing_ with him," Raymond said.

"He's just a human," Park replied, grabbing the back of his chair and sitting down heavily.

"Any human can get lucky, darling," Sadie said, stirring her bourbon with her finger and sucking the blood/alcohol tonic off her finger without smudging her lipstick or dripping on her blouse. "look at poor Patrick."

Poor Patrick indeed.

"None of you get it." Raymond said. "and that's why he's going to kill all of you."

"Don't be melodramatic, Raymond dear."

"The Reverend isn't a man," Raymond said, looking directly at Park with a shell-shocked look in his deep-set gray eyes. "he's a storm. He's God's wrath. A pillar of salt. There's no weathering him or hiding from him, there's just getting the hell out of his way." The other vampires stared at him like he just finished telling a ghost story. Raymond's foggy gaze dripped over the edge of the table and landed in his lap. "...our punishment," he said quietly, more to himself than the table.

"He's not the boogeyman." Raymond went on, gripping the table so hard that splinters of wood popped up between his fingers. "He's a dead man. His soul is a shell, but it doesn't matter how much vampire blood he puts in it, he can't fill it. The only reason I've lived this long is that I already know what you dumbasses refuse to accept."

"Which is?" Sadie asked, tapping her ring on her glass again.

Raymond glanced sidelong at her but only for a second. "That fighting him isn't an option." Park scoffed. "Keep braying, jackass," Raymond said. "you'll be the first to go. He's smarter than you and more patient than you. He can't be reasoned with or bribed, and unlike us, he isn't afraid of dying. If he knows we're here, and trust me, thanks to our good friend Patrick, he does, he'll smoke us out eventually. He'll cut the head off the snake," he looked at Simon. "and pick the rest of us off one by one until there's no one left this time. Not even me."

The rest of the table was silent.

"Well," Sadie said, taking a sip of bourbon demurely. "you certainly paint a bleak portrait of our future, Raymond dear."

"No shit," Park said. "I'm not a little kid, Raymond, and your bedtime stories don't scare me."

Raymond refused to look at him. "If you're not scared, you're even dumber than you look."

Park shook his head, tapping his knuckles on the underside of the table as he bounced his knee anxiously.

Simon looked across the table at Raymond, tilting his head to try to get Raymond to look at him. "You're the only one who knows him as a man. You survived, this long, you've lived."

"The one who made me wasn't so lucky," Raymond said. "the only difference is I ran, he didn't. But he always comes back."

Park scoffed again. "So we can't run, we can't hide, we can't fight, according to you," Raymond flipped him off. "what the hell do you expect us to actually do?"

"Most likely?" Raymond asked. "Die." He glanced at Simon, whose thick eyebrows had formed a shelf over his eyes. "We'll all probably die."

* * *

 **Thank you for reading.**

* * *

 **A lot of changes in the sequel that are probably already evident to you; there are going to be new POV characters besides Missy, new problems, and some new faces. Also, this time around, I won't be setting a word count minimum for myself. With the Breaking Point, I sometimes found myself writing too much, to the point where it either became filler or I was just too concerned with reaching a specific word count that I wasn't as emotionally invested in what I was writing, which often led to me losing interest for long (understatement of the century) periods of time. Instead of that, I'll just be writing until I feel I've reached the logical closure point and then moving onto the next chapter. Doing it this way, I hope, will keep everything fresher, with less filler, and hopefully get chapters out to you all quicker. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about the new story, the new faces, and what you're all looking forward to most in the sequel. Thanks for reading, and happy Thanksgiving to those of you living in the U.S.**


	2. Who Wants To Live Forever?

" _Everything is so fragile. There's so much conflict, so much pain...you keep waiting for the dust to settle and then you realize this is it; the dust is your life going on. If happy comes along—that weird, unbearable delight that's actual happy—I think you have to grab it while you can. You take what you can get, 'cause it's here, and then...gone."_

* * *

Chapter 1

* * *

 _(27 days until V-day)_

"It's not as hard as you're making it out to be," Dwayne said, exasperated. It was hard to tell, but for him it was exasperated.

Missy threw her hands up and let her arms fall dramatically against her thighs with a loud slap. "It's _flying_ , Dwayne." She yanked on the brim of the soft, worn teal Seattle Mariners baseball cap she was wearing with both hands, folding the brim like a rolled up newspaper. "If it was easy, everyone could do it."

"Everyone _can_ do it," Dwayne said pointedly.

Missy sighed with her palate. She reached up and took off her baseball cap, tightened her ponytail, then replaced it with her bangs tucked underneath. It was supposed to keep her hair out of her face, Dwayne's idea, and whether it really helped at all her remained to be seen because all it had done so far was make her sweat. "Vampires aren't everyone, Dwayne." She was wearing a mustard yellow thrift store tee shirt that said: "Michigan: State of Champions" on the front and matching bruises on her knees and ass. Her knees were scuffed and there was dried blood on the edges of the holes in her jeans.

Obviously, her flying lessons were going great.

"Laddie can do it."

Laddie's giggle was drowned out by the constant clicking of the Rubik's cube in his hands. Three days and the only side he'd completed was the one she did for him and even that had taken her the better part of an entire night.

"Is this how David motivated you to learn how to fly?" She furrowed her eyebrows, pouting. "Because it's making me feel like crap." Dwayne went to the Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim school of motivation like David. Hurting her feelings and her backside was all he'd done, but no one said being a vampire was supposed to be easy.

That's not true. Paul said it was easy, like a hundred times.

 _"Why do you gotta make everything into math homework?"_

 _"What?"_

 _"More complicated than it has to be, brains."_

That was a direct quote, and if Paul was calling her out for making things harder than they had to be of all people, maybe that was a sign she was doing something wrong. I mean, the bruises on her backside said that too.

"You want to see how David taught us?" Dwayne asked.

"Wait, no, Dwayne—" he grabbed her by the waist and flipped her over his shoulder, knocking the wind out of her. The brim of her cap hit his back and her cap popped off like the head of a dandelion under her thumbnail. It swung from her ponytail and fell off completely, landing in the dirt. "Dwayne!" She pushed on his back, turning her head and torso around like she was hanging upside down from the monkey bars. The Pacific wind was more violent the closer they got to the edge of the bluff. Her heart dropped into her mouth like Connect Four, and not just because she was upside down. The wind blew her hair into her mouth, "Dwayne!" her breath hitched. "You made your point. This isn't funny."

"I almost made my point," Dwayne said. He grabbed her by the ankles and lifted her legs so she slipped off his shoulder, holding her up effortlessly as if she weighed nothing at all.

"Dwayne," Laddie said nervously, looking over his shoulder in the direction of the wooden steps that led down to the cave under the bluff.

"You're too close to the point to miss the rocks."

Her lungs wouldn't expand all the way hanging upside down, it was like trying to breathe with Dwayne sitting on her stomach. "Dwayne," she gasped.

"Think happy thoughts, Missy."

"Dwayne, I can't swim!"

The expectation of drowning was optimistic, she thought. That was only if she missed the rocks, which as Dwayne pointed out was unlikely given her current trajectory. What was likely was that she'd die. Her body would be smashed on the rocks like a baby bird, her brief life as a half-vampire cut shorter because Dwayne couldn't take a joke.

She banged her elbow on the cliff face so hard she thought she broke it, throwing her arms out as if she could slow her descent that way. "Dwayne!" She tried to scream but the rushing air went down her throat and punched her in her empty stomach.

 _Happy thoughts, Missy._

"Dwayne!"

* * *

She couldn't see how close she was getting to the ground, every time she tried to look it was like trying to lift her head off the headrest on a roller coaster: impossible.

Dwayne wasn't going to let her die. Not like this, not after breaking all of the vampire societal rules like Ponyboy Curtis to save her life. He wouldn't risk pissing off Max and David by saving her just to turn around and throw her off a cliff a few weeks later, not even to prove a point.

She kept waiting for the punchline to hit. Or the ground.

But she didn't hit the rocks, or the water. She did hit something, though.

She should've known it was Dwayne right away because it felt like a truck hit her in the air. It still knocked the wind out of her when they caught her when she tripped, which still happened way too frequently, and nine times out of ten it was David who caught her because he always seemed to be around when she embarrassed herself, like a shark drawn to her shame in the water.

"You're really dramatic," Dwayne said. "anyone ever told you that?"

"You're a sociopath!" Missy would have punched him if she could physically take her hands off of him to do so. Dwayne held them both up in the air like they were treading water in a swimming pool and he was teaching her how to swim, which she had little context for because she didn't know how to swim and there weren't that many public pools in Queen Anne, but she remembered floating like this with her dad when she was five. Almost drowning put future lessons on permanent hiatus, and after her mother's second attempt, she couldn't even take a bath, let alone submerge herself completely. It was manageable these days. She didn't hyperventilate or cry if she got near water, which was a far cry from how she was twelve years and pre-therapy ago. She still couldn't take baths though.

"You're fine," Dwayne said. The arm holding her up cut into her lower back like a seatbelt.

"I am not fine." She kicked him as hard as she could with their legs dangling. "I could have died."

"You weren't even close."

"I could have had a heart attack!"

Dwayne very nearly laughed. "You're seventeen. I don't know many seventeen-year-olds that die of heart attacks."

Missy huffed. "With my luck, I'd be the first."

Dwayne half smiled. "Yeah, you're probably right."

Missy kicked her legs like she was trying to fix her covers without touching them. "Is that really how David taught you how to fly?"

Dwayne shrugged. "What do you think?"

"I think David's a sociopath." Dwayne laughed. Missy bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. "You know, the whole concept of sink or swim has been proven to actually be kind of counterproductive, not to mention dangerous, especially when it comes to _flying_!"

"We all swam," Dwayne said mildly.

Missy pursed her lips to the side. "Did you really let David throw Laddie off a cliff?"

Dwayne smiled roguishly. "No."

Missy didn't think so. Star, on the other hand, she would have paid to see David throw off a cliff, just to see the look on her face when he caught her.

Dwayne huffed. "Me too."

* * *

"Is it really not supposed to be this hard?" Missy asked. "Flying, I mean."

Dwayne shrugged again,

"I can't fly, I can't hear anyone else's thoughts but mine," Missy sighed, tightening her ponytail absently. "I must be the world's worst half-vampire." She picked up her baseball cap and smacked it against her thigh, shaking the dirt off. Laddie ran up to her and hugged her, the Rubik's cube stabbing her in the lower back. She swept his long hair out of his face with one hand and put her baseball cap on him. He giggled when she tugged on the brim, covering his eyes.

He tilted his head back, holding the top of her baseball cap so it wouldn't fall off his head. "Did you fly?"

Missy huffed. "No, Dwayne caught me again." The bruises on her legs and backside were a testament to just how ineffective a running start was when it came to flying, and jumping out of a tree, which sounded like a good idea in her head, was not any better than her previous attempts in practice. Luckily Dwayne caught her before she could hurt herself any more than she already had, putting the kibosh on her solo flight plans. It was probably a good thing he did, otherwise, she'd have more than bruises on her backside to show for it.

She didn't even want to be a vampire in the first place, but it was discouraging nonetheless that she couldn't even seem to conquer the basics. She didn't expect to be good at everything vampire right away, but she didn't expect to be _bad_ at everything either.

"You're thinking about it too much," Dwayne said.

"Thank you," Missy said tartly. "that really helps me, Dwayne, thank you." Things had been better between her and Dwayne ever since Max let them off the hook for Patrick's death. She could tell that Dwayne was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but she'd been making an effort to move past it, and make the best of the bad situation she found herself in, even if she hadn't technically forgiven him, for the sake of peace, even if it was just her own peace of mind. She hadn't had much these past few weeks, of peace, that is, which wasn't Dwayne's fault either because she still hadn't told him about Patrick.

Patrick _was_ dead, but no matter how many times she told herself that, she didn't really believe it. She was there when he died, she torched him herself, and even if he could have survived that, there's no way he could survive being turned into Hamburger Helper. But the fact remained that Patrick had been with her since he died.

 _"A part of me is gonna be inside you always, sweetheart." Missy clenched her jaw, but she couldn't get away from him without touching him, and touching him would be like acknowledging that he was really there._

 _"Who says I'm not?" Patrick pinched her cheek so hard her right eye closed. "You're not exactly the most reliable narrator, babe. And that stake went through both of us, remember?"_

Maybe Patrick was right. When she died, she had Patrick's blood inside her, and now she was a half-vampire. Did that make Patrick her vampire dad or Dwayne? She needed vampire sex-ed. She didn't know how any of this worked, and she didn't know if she was embarrassed to tell Dwayne about her hallucinations like she just figured out how to masturbate, or afraid that he'd tell her she wasn't imagining it at all. At this point, she didn't even know what she thought, but Patrick planted the idea in her head and she couldn't let it go. Her mother was crazy too, maybe she inherited more than just her dimples.

Dwayne was right, she did think too much.

"What are you thinking about, Missy?" Laddie held her hand and swung their arms lightly.

Dwayne caught the panicked look on her face before she could mask it and gave her a strange look.

"Like Dwayne said." She swung their arms harder, making Laddie's shoulder go up and down. He laughed. "Happy thoughts."

* * *

 **RAYMOND**

Concord, California

( _83 miles outside of Santa Carla_ )

It would be an hour and a half before they reached Santa Carla and already —"An hour and twenty-seven minutes.", an hour and twenty-seven minutes, thank you, LYDIA, and already Raymond felt uneasy. This was news to no one who knew him, Raymond was usually on edge, it was the only reason he'd lived this long, but he hadn't felt fear like this in a long time.

To call this a suicide mission would be to drastically underplay the gravity of the situation. He fully expected all three of them to die, but probably Luther first. The vampire sitting behind them, a dark-skinned man in his very late thirties or early forties, with a broad hooked nose and a shaved head, and the personality of a lamb chop, didn't comment, and Raymond preferred it that way. He didn't bring Luther with him for the conversation, that much was obvious to anyone who looked at him. If it had been left up to him he wouldn't have come at all, but he definitely wouldn't have brought Luther of all people. Lydia, he could take or leave, but he didn't even know Luther personally, and he didn't like putting his life in anyone's hands, least of all someone he didn't even know from Adam. Why Simon picked him wasn't a mystery, he was 6'4" and as wide as he was tall, he wasn't here to provide shade. The upside of having Lydia with him was at least he didn't have to sit next to Luther or anyone else on the bus.

Lydia was an asshole. That wasn't an indictment of her personally, Raymond thought most people were, especially vampires, but Lydia was basically a Trapper Keeper with great legs, which was fine if he needed someone to memorize a bus schedule or nitpick his inner monologue, but in a fight? Which to be fair, was what he was expecting when they got there, but let's be honest, it wasn't going to be a fight, it was gonna be a slaughter, and there was more of Luther to hack through than there was Lydia. She didn't get where she was in Park's merry gang of psychopaths because of her good lucks —Raymond glanced sidelong at her, obviously, and he was too smart to underestimate her and too smart to think he was infallible, but that didn't mean he trusted her or even liked her either for that matter, which was hardly a surprise, he didn't really like anyone.

He liked public transportation even less, but he didn't pay for the ticket, and he didn't have a license (nor could he reach the pedals even if he wanted to), so he wasn't allowed to complain.

That didn't appear to be stopping him, but he was riding on a bus full of coughing humans toward his almost certain death, so he believed he was entitled.

Simon and the others may have thought he was exaggerating, that's fine, Luther and Lydia may not believe him either for all he knew, he didn't really care, they'd all die, and Max and his boys would too if they didn't listen to him, and that was gospel as far as he was concerned.

They had no idea what was coming, that much was clear, otherwise, they wouldn't have bothered with Simon's dog and pony show in the first place. It was just an excuse for Park to show his ass and for Sadie to show her teeth. All they wanted to talk about was Max, and Patrick's "suspicious" death at his boy's hand, if not necessarily Max's behest.

Fuck Patrick. They all wanted him dead, they were all just too self-righteous to admit it, so they pointed the finger at Max when what they should have been doing was planning their own funerals because they were all. Missing. The point.

Which was: the hell with Max. If they were smart, they'd all lay low and let the Reverend kill Max and lay waste to the rest of them, and divvy up his territory when it was over. This "diplomatic" bullshit was exactly that, and they all knew it. It was a smoke screen to hide what they really wanted, which was to turn Max into their little whipping boy for Patrick's murder and give him a slap on the wrist for doing what they all wanted but were too much of a pussy to do themselves, which was kill Patrick.

This was all about territory, they could say it was about Patrick but they didn't give a shit about Patrick, no one did, not even Max.

The Reverend's timing was almost too convenient. Patrick's murder and his return to the west coast for the first time in a decade came within five years of the next Shift. Typical that Sadie and Park would try to use Max's neck as a stepping stone to make a power grab during the unrest.

God, he hated vampires.

The bus slowed down as it came to the exit, and out of the corner of his eye, Raymond saw Lydia sit up like a bird dog. He let out a prolonged sigh. "What?" He asked.

They were sitting directly behind the driver so Raymond could be closest to the door, which was also why he was sitting in the aisle seat instead of Lydia. Lydia took the window seat without complaint, which as far as he was concerned, was her best quality, but he hadn't seen her look out the window once the whole time.

She leaned forward, reaching over the front of their seat to tap the driver on the shoulder. "This is the wrong exit," she said quietly, but not to Raymond. If he didn't know better he'd say she looked panicked. She touched the driver's shoulder to get his attention. "Excuse me, sir?"

"Don't talk to him." Raymond sank lower in their seat, groaning loudly with his head voice. Great, now he was going to talk to them for the rest of the ride. "I can't take you two anywhere."

"What?" The bus driver could almost see Lydia without turning his head, and he met her eyes briefly in the rear-view mirror. Raymond thought he seemed surprised that Lydia was talking to him, but no one was more so than Raymond. She'd been sitting in complete silence the whole time except to correct him, with an unpleasant look on her face that rivaled his own, so it came as a shock to hear her address the driver with such an effortlessly sincere tone of voice.

"This is the wrong exit."

"I know that," the driver said. He had a mustache that looked like a push broom that wiggled when he talked. "I gotta get gas."

Unable to stop himself, Raymond incredulously asked: "You didn't get gas before we left?"

The bus driver glanced at him in the rear-view mirror but addressed Lydia only, perhaps he, like most people, erroneously assumed that he was Lydia's unpleasant adolescent son and just ignored him. "The fella who usually drives this route called in sick last minute. We run a tight schedule," he pronounced it shed-jull. "just didn't have time."

Ignoring Raymond's now audible groaning, Lydia asked: "How long will it take?"

The driver lifted his baseball cap and scratched the top of his balding head absently. "'Bout fifteen minutes or so I figure, won't take long, and we'll be back on the road before you know it, ma'am."

"Thank you." Lydia leaned back again and didn't say anything else.

Raymond glared at her out of the corner of his eye as their bus pulled into the gas station. None of the humans on the bus seemed to notice or care, most of them were asleep given how late it was, and only one or two of them got off the bus to stretch their legs or pee while the driver pumped gas. Raymond, Lydia, and Luther remained in their seats, and Raymond stared petulantly out the window over Lydia's shoulder.

A brassy brown station wagon was parked next to them. The left front tire was a donut, and the back of the car was covered in bumper stickers, the only one of which that wasn't too faded for him to read had a cartoon owl on it and said: "Give a hoot! Don't pollute".

"Ugh."

The driver's side door was open, but Raymond couldn't see the driver. It was almost like he was daring someone to try to steal it.

Raymond thumped his forehead on the back of the seat in front of them, sighing. This was a waste of time. He was sitting here reading bumper stickers while Dutton was on his way to Santa Carla right now, and the longer they sat here, the likelihood that his imminent death was getting more imminent by the second increased. "This is ridiculous." He said, squeezing the top of the seat with both hands. Lydia didn't comment.

It felt like an eternity, which when put into the perspective of him being a vampire, said a lot. It felt like an eternity and an eternity had a baby and he just watched it drive off to college in that stupid fucking station wagon. Fear sat in his empty stomach like an anchor, but it was only ten minutes before the bus driver returned.

"Alright folks," finally, Raymond thought. "we got a full tank and about fifty miles to our destination. Get some sleep and I'll try to get you there as quick as I can. Next stop, Santa Carla."

If Raymond's heart could beat, it would be racing.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading.**

* * *

 **I had originally intended to wait at least a week after the prologue to put up the first chapter, but I was too excited to wait. There will be a gap before the next chapter is posted, but I hope this first chapter will be enough to tide you over until then.**


	3. Jaws In A Station Wagon

" _Don't criticize what you can't understand."_

* * *

Chapter 2

* * *

 **THE MAN**

The sunrise painted the inside of the station wagon gold and orange, the peach-colored light of the first rays reflected off the dust and crusty white dried water and wiper fluid on the windshield, blinding the man. He lowered the visor and a takeout menu for a Chinese place fell into his lap. He ignored it, taking his right hand off the steering wheel and turning the radio on just as the song that was playing was ending. The quiet, too-close-to-the-microphone voice of the nighttime DJ belonged to a woman. In a half hour or so a louder, more appropriate for the daytime voice would replace her, most likely a man, but he'll have already turned the radio off by that point.

The air coming through the crack in the driver's side window made the air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror swing from side to side like a fast metronome. A plastic key-chain with a photo in it also hung from the rear-view mirror, in it was a picture of someone else's family. The man smiling in the photograph was not the man driving the car, not the man to whom belonged the heavy brown duffel bag sitting on the floor in the backseat of the station wagon.

There were few other cars on the road, it was too early in the morning, and most of the other drivers belonged to families on their way to the beach, which was easy for the man to tell from the luggage strapped to the roof of their car or the children sleeping in the backseat, their little heads on pillows pressed up against the windows, a cooler in between them so they wouldn't fight on the long car ride.

As the sun rose, the temperature inside the station wagon did too, and the man used his left hand to manually roll down the window halfway. The rosary wrapped around his wrist and thumb caught on the lever but came loose when he angled his arm downward so the beads slipped down his arm and collected at the base of his hand.

The cold air hit the man's face and swept through the rest of the station wagon, filling the car with the rotten smell of saltwater and the pine tree air freshener, which swung violently now and made the faces of the family in the photo in the plastic key-chain look like featureless, flesh-colored demons.

He reached over and turned the dial on the radio, flipping past the end of an advertisement for the boardwalk paid for by the Santa Carla Board of Tourism and a song by Simply Red. He stopped on a station that was playing Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" and turned the volume up nearly as high as it would go.

The man tapped his hands on the steering wheel in time with the guitar strains, the rosary dangling from his left wrist swaying with the song. The station wagon ate up the one lane road, and the man looked out the window as Iggy Pop sang "he sees the winding ocean drive," and a dirty green sign that said: Santa Carla, 5 miles, passed by his passenger side mirror.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading.**


	4. The Washateria Blues

**The full title of this chapter is The Washateria Blues (Vampeer Pressure for Dummies)**

* * *

" _Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change."_

* * *

Chapter 3

* * *

 **MISSY**

"Why am I carrying everything?" A beat. "And this still doesn't explain how you get all the blood out of your clothes. Laundromats aren't magic." Missy said, to which Paul replied: "So I can stare at your ass." and "Vampire magic." respectively. Missy definitely believed the former, though not necessarily the latter.

"Eh, you're a half-vampire what do you know?"

Missy could feel every piece of gravel and every crack in the asphalt through her tennis shoes as they walked, and the string of the heavy canvas laundry bag she was carrying was cutting into her wrist and hand —that much she knew.

It was 9 o'clock, the sun had been down for about an hour. It must have rained at some point during the day, and again recently, because there were puddles on the side of the road near the curb, and the warm asphalt still smelled like petrichor. Missy was glad it wasn't raining now —her hair was frizzy enough as it was.

She could barely hold her arm up without the bottom of the bag dragging on the ground. "You could take turns, you know." Paul was humming "California Girls" by David Lee Roth, walking on the edge of the curb like a tightrope, splashing water on her jeans every time he fell off and stomped on the puddles along the side of the road. There were grayish brown splotches all over her shins from the dirty water, but her jeans didn't feel wet.

It was still pretty hot out even with the sun down, so the water was drying almost as fast as Paul could splash her. She was too sweaty to care that much, the base of her ponytail was soaking wet, and the only reason her bangs weren't sticking to her forehead was because they were wet enough to stay that way when she slicked them back. She was already sweating through her light tee shirt, at this point they'd have to wash her shirt too when they got to the laundromat.

Paul was still wearing his jacket. It was like he didn't feel the humidity at all. "Are you sure you're not all lizards?" she asked, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm and staring at Paul's dry face enviously.

"What?" Paul stepped off the curb again, landing in a puddle that was so deep it got the ankles of her jeans wet when it hit her.

"You're not sweating." Missy pointed out bitterly. There was no part of her that wasn't sweating right now. If she looked half as bad as she felt, then it was a good thing they were the only ones out walking around right now.

"I haven't eaten yet so I'm a little cold." Paul put his hand under her drenched ponytail on the back of her sweaty nape.

Missy sighed happily. "Oh my god, it's like sticking my head in the refrigerator."

Paul grinned carefully and took his hand back. "Since we're on the subject and all,"

Missy opened her eyes and glared at Paul before he could continue. "I'm not in the mood, Paul."

Paul snorted. "Look, I know you got a hard on for doing it on your birthday but you should just rip the Band-Aid off, girl."

Missy turned away from him, tightening her ponytail viciously. "I'm not having this discussion with you again, Paul." She picked the bag up again and started walking away. She didn't get far because the bag weighed almost as much as she did, and Paul's legs were practically as long as she was.

"All I'm saying is we're out here," Paul fell into step beside her immediately. "you could do it tonight, just get it over with. I could show you—"

Missy stopped so abruptly that Paul slammed into her back, almost knocking her onto her face. "Why are you peer pressuring me all of a sudden?"

"I'm not," Paul said, too fast for Missy to really believe him.

"You are!" Missy poked him hard in the chest, for all the good it did. "You've been doing it slightly ever since Dwayne changed me but you've gotten worse the last few days. Why?"

Paul held his hands up placatingly and shrugged with his head. "I just think you're making too big a deal out of it."

"Well, it's my big deal to make," she said. "It's _my_ life, and I've only got a month of it left," her voice cracked. It was a few seconds before she added quietly, "isn't that enough?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Maybe I don't want to be seventeen forever, did you ever think about that?" Being a teenager was hard enough, but being one forever, however long that was, was just about the worst thing she could imagine. Eighteen wasn't that far from seventeen in the grand scheme of things, but it was the last real ground she had to hold with David, and she wasn't giving it up easily. The only thing she could imagine that would be worse than being a teenager forever, was being a child forever. She didn't know how you'd even get by. "Maybe I just want to enjoy being a real person for as long as I can."

"Why?" Paul asked incredulously.

Missy sighed. "Because in twenty-seven days I'm never going to get to be human again. I want to do the things I won't be able to do later for as long as I can now."

"Like what?"

"Like breathing." She said wetly. "And not having to hurt people. Feeling the sun on my face when I want to, and getting older. Maybe I wanted to see what I looked like," she inhaled tremulously. "I don't really look like either of my parents, maybe I wanted to see which one I end up looking like when I get old. Maybe I just wanted to get old _at all_." She looked down at her shoes, speaking directly into her chest with her chin pressed against her collarbone. "Eighteen is the last real birthday I'm ever going to have, and I want to enjoy it _as a human_. I want to eat a stupid cake and sing happy birthday badly."

"You can still do that as a vampire." Paul said.

"But it won't be real." This was her last real birthday, every one after this one wouldn't count because she wouldn't really be getting any older. She didn't know how long Paul had been a vampire, or how many birthdays he'd celebrated as one, but she could see why he didn't understand how important this was to her. She wasn't ready to be a vampire yet. She knew that a month wouldn't make a difference either, she was never going to be on board with killing people, but like it or not, she made a deal with David, one she couldn't renege on even if she wanted to, and believe me she wanted to. "I don't want to be a vampire, Paul, but I don't have a choice anymore, and I've accepted that, otherwise I'm just going to be miserable forever, so I just want to enjoy being human for twenty-seven more days, okay?"

"I just don't want you to change your mind, that's all." Paul dragged the sole of his boot back and forth on the asphalt.

Missy scoffed sadly. "If I honestly thought David would let me get away with it, I could see why you'd be worried, but you know David better than I do, you know he's expecting me to go through with it. Even if he says he won't force me, you know that won't last forever." It was very like Paul to be so concerned about her changing her mind, it was no secret how he felt about her and about her joining the family. It was sweet, kind of. If she wasn't so scared she could throw up about becoming a full vampire she might think it was endearing.

She couldn't say that Paul's concerns were entirely unfounded either. She hadn't exactly been chomping at the bit to be a full vampire, she could see where he was coming from. She'd given him every reason to think she was going to back out of her deal with David when the day finally came, despite the fact that both of them knew David would never let her, and if not David, then certainly Max.

She was still frankly terrified of the head vampire, no matter how harmless he seemed —especially how harmless he seemed.

Keeping Max's existence a secret was harder than it sounded when the people from whom she was supposed to be keeping him a secret were mind readers, but to their credit, Star and Laddie had been giving her, in addition to a wide berth, her privacy, as much as they could anyway. She had no way of knowing if they were telling the truth about not dipping in her thoughts, but she chose to believe them anyway for her own peace of mind.

"My arm is killing me, here." She swung the bag at Paul, but it was so heavy she couldn't really get any momentum behind it and it hit him halfheartedly in the knees. Paul looked like he wanted to keep arguing —that or he was breathing through his mouth, and considering Missy knew for a fact that full vampires like Paul didn't actually breathe, she was inclined to believe it was the former rather than the latter. "I don't want to keep fighting about this, Paul, it's between David and me, and really it should just be between me and me because it's _my_ decision, not yours, and certainly not David's." She added in sotto voce, which was as pointless as Paul breathing through his mouth. He could hear her regardless.

She didn't even have the privacy of her own thoughts. That was the only thing that hadn't completely changed since she became a half-vampire. Most notably was her relationship, or lack thereof anymore, with the brothers Frog.

She missed Edgar and Alan so much she could barely breathe sometimes. It was like a hole in her chest that opened up again every time she thought about them, ripping the scab off again before it could even remotely begin to heal.

Her falling out with the Frog brothers wasn't directly Dwayne's fault —indirectly it was absolutely Dwayne's fault, but really it was her own fault for not putting some distance between them before Edgar and Alan got hurt because of her and not after. Really it was down to bad luck and Edgar's suspicious nature, which she didn't account for when she went to say goodbye.

At least David had more or less agreed to leave them be despite the fact that they knew their secret. She checked on them every night anyway to make sure that David wasn't going back on his word, and to remind herself that all this suffering wasn't for nothing. She may be a monster-in-training, but Edgar and Alan were safe in spite of her, and that was all that mattered to her anymore.

That didn't make it hurt less, and she was just torturing herself, something which Marko pointed out every time she went to see them (making sure they didn't see her too). It was everything she could do not to try to talk to them, to apologize and try to explain her side of things, but she knew even if they would humor her long enough for her to try —which they wouldn't, Edgar said they'd kill her if they ever saw her again, that even in the parallel universe where they actually forgave her, she knew they were safer off without her.

Paul mercifully took the bag from her and swung it over his left shoulder like it weighed nothing at all. Missy heard him take a quiet unnecessary breath and cautiously braced herself. "You really want a cake for your birthday?"

Missy laughed. Paul started to sing the chorus of "California Girls" at the top of his lungs as they walked, and for the next couple of minutes, the hole in her chest didn't bother her as much.

* * *

"What made you want to be a vampire?" Missy halfheartedly kicked her legs so that her ankles swung back and hit the washer she was sitting on, making a hollow metallic cacophony that accompanied Billy Ocean's "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going" that was playing overhead. That was irony for you, even the radio was mocking her now.

Paul popped the stale bubblegum he found in the pocket of the jeans that had been sitting on top of the washer when they came in with his teeth and shrugged, which was about as deep of an answer as she was expecting from someone like Paul. "I don't know." Paul shrugged again. "I mean, why wouldn't you wanna be a vampire?"

This line of conversation felt dangerously repetitive. "I can think of a few reasons." Missy said petulantly, which Paul mostly ignored, except for the quiet "ha" he made in response. "Do you ever wish you'd changed your mind?" She knew the answer before she even asked. She very much doubted that Paul had ever regretted anything in his whole life. The much louder "ha!" from Paul confirmed this.

She tapped the backs of her heels against the washer solemnly, blowing her now dry but still incredibly gross feeling bangs off her forehead.

Paul pushed a small pile of dirty clothes across the floor with his foot and slapped her on the knee with his icy hand. "Lift your legs," he said.

Missy pulled her legs up onto the washer with her, perching her heels on the edge of the machine and wrapping her arms around her knees. She could feel how cold Paul was even in that brief second. He must have been really hungry.

Paul neither confirmed nor denied whether or not he was, but Missy could hear him snapping the stranger's gum as he loaded the washer under her, so maybe that was why he was chewing it in the first place, to fight his hunger pangs.

Paul kicked the washer shut so loudly that the woman folding her clean clothes next to them gave them a dirty look. "Quarter," he held his hand out and Missy lowered her legs so she could put her hand in her pocket. She carefully tugged a Ziploc bag full of quarters out of her jeans and unrolled it. She unzipped the bag and fished out a single quarter that was painfully warm from being pressed up against her thigh compared to Paul's fingers when she handed it to him.

"Was it hard?" She asked suddenly.

"Was what hard?" Paul asked, leaning against the row of washers across from her.

"Your first time." Missy realized too late how bad that sounded. "You know what I mean!" She said before the feverishly excited look on Paul's face could lead to him making a joke about erections.

"Okay, Little David." Paul said playfully.

Missy glared at him. "Just answer the question."

"What was the question?" Missy knew that Paul knew damn well what the question was, but she also knew she wasn't getting anything out of Paul until she humored him and asked him again if it was hard.

"That's what she said."

"Paul!"

He chewed on his cuticle and laughed so hard that his weight against the washer made it rock slightly. "Sorry." Paul cleared his throat. "Ask me again."

"No." Missy said petulantly. "You're not going to take it seriously, I'm not going to try to talk to you."

"God, you're a buzz-kill sometimes." Paul sighed, though it wasn't as venomous as it sounded.

Missy didn't point out that Paul was supposed to be her friend and she was going through a really rough time, something he'd already been through, mind, so excuse her for trying to get a little comfort and perspective from him.

"Buzz-kill." Paul said again, this time noticeably more affectionately.

"Was it though?" Missy chewed on her lip. " _Difficult_ ," she said pointedly. "I mean."

Paul pursed his lips in thought, giving Missy the brief hope that he would actually answer her, hope which was immediately shattered when he dramatically said "Nah," followed by: "our teeth are really sharp."

"I'm aware," Missy snapped. "but you know that's not what I meant."

The woman's voice humming what felt like a lullaby to Missy that was playing now through the speaker mounted on the corner of the wall near them made Missy's ears perk up, the way certain smells reminded you of the past. It was so familiar to her, but she didn't know why. It was like trying to remember a dream after waking up. "Who sings this?" She asked out loud, more for her own benefit than Paul's, but he heard her anyway.

"Barbra Streisand." Paul said absently. "The Way We Were."

Missy stared at him. "Why do you know that?"

Paul shrugged. "Used to play on the radio all the time."

Yeah, but how long ago? Because this song reminded her of being a little kid, of her mother humming it while she gave her a bath.

Speaking of her dearly departed mother, it had been weeks since she heard from her —if she had ever really heard from her in the first place, but she had seen neither hide nor hallucination of her mother since the night Patrick and Eden died. She wished she could say the same for Patrick.

She still didn't know if that was her mother's ghost or a product of her overactive and sadistic imagination, but regardless of whether they were real or not, she missed them. It was the first time in seven years, longer if you took into account just how long her mother had been out of her mind, that her mom had really talked to her. Even if it wasn't real, it had been nice, and it was now more than ever that she really needed an Obi Wan. With everything that was going on with David and Max, and especially with the Frog brothers' abrupt exodus from her life, she could really use someone to talk to.

"You could talk to us."

Missy sighed. "It's not the same and you know it." Although all of them had been through what she was going through before, none of them really sympathized with her. They couldn't. It had been so long since any of them had been in her shoes, they just genuinely couldn't understand, even Paul, who hadn't been a vampire for as long as the rest of them had, had still been one for too long to really know how she felt.

They might, she thought, if she even tried to talk to any of them, but she didn't. Maybe if she was being honest with herself, she still hadn't forgiven any of them for what happened with Patrick. Having Patrick hanging around to torture her didn't help. It was a constant reminder of that night, and the longer it went on that she didn't tell them about her hallucinations, the worse and more isolated she felt. She convinced herself that they either wouldn't or couldn't understand what she was going through, so there was no point in trying to make them. Even with Patrick haunting her, she felt incredibly alone.

She _was_ incredibly alone.

"And I've asked you not to read my mind, Paul." She knew he largely couldn't help it, but it was the cherry on top of the cake that was all of her other problems, and honestly it was just the easiest one to deal with right now. "If I thought any of you actually cared, I might," at Paul's unhappy expression. "maybe cared isn't the right word, but if I thought any of you might understand, or if there was something to be done about it, I might tell you. But it's done with." Talking about it now would be like closing the barn door after the horses already ran away. It might make her feel better in the short term, but at the end of the day, she would still be a half-vampire, and talking about it wouldn't make her feel better about that.

Paul shifted his weight from one foot to the other and clucked his tongue, inhaling dramatically like there was something else he wanted to say, but didn't.

Missy was glad he didn't. She stuck her hands in her pants pockets, which did little to make either of them feel less awkward.

Of all the things she'd lost or had been irrevocably changed by her being a half-vampire, the worst one had to be how all of her relationships had been affected. None of them had gone unscathed, sure, some of them had gotten off light by comparison, but none of them had been left intact. Not all of them were as worse off as her relationship with Edgar and Alan (or Eden, for that matter, if they were talking who'd faired worst for being friends with her, it was definitely Eden), but despite Dwayne's... _noblest_ of intentions, she still resented them all for it, even Paul and Marko. The only person she could say for certain whose relationship with her hadn't been fundamentally changed by her being turned into a vampire was David. They still more or less hated each other, and she could still barely stand to be in the same room as him, but if the fact that he was no longer trying to actively kill her was an improvement, it was the only one so far since she became a half-vampire.

Maybe Paul was right and everything would get better when she made her first kill. Maybe everything just sucked right now because she was in purgatory, caught between her human life and her life as a vampire, but not quite either. Maybe so, but she'd take a half life as a half-vampire versus no life at all.

"How much longer?" She sighed.

"Forty-five minutes," Paul replied without looking behind her at the washing machine. "Wanna play twenty questions?"

Missy huffed through her nose. "What I want is not to stand here for forty-five more minutes. Can't I just meet you at the boardwalk?" She knew the answer already without asking.

"David wants—"

"Wants us to stick together, I know." Missy sighed again. "You're my babysitter. Was it like this when you and Marko and Dwayne were half-vampires? Or does David just not trust me because I'm me?"

"It's only been a couple weeks, Miss." Paul said.

"Don't remind me."

"David just doesn't want you to kill someone before, you know."

Missy raised her eyebrows sarcastically. "Before I'm actually supposed to kill someone, you mean?" She asked dryly.

"Yeah." Paul pushed off the washing machine and came over and stood next to her, bumping her shoulder with his. "He'll lighten up on the leash eventually. He's just careful, you know?"

Missy leaned back on Paul automatically. "I know." She kept hearing how it was going to get better, but she had yet to see any evidence of that. Missy caught the corner of her bottom lip with her teeth and bit it. "We don't have to tell him," she said casually, as casually as she could when her heart was already racing at the thought of trying to keep anything from David. "What's forty-five minutes? Even I can manage for that long."

"No way."

"I'll stay out of trouble —I won't talk to Edgar or Alan, I promise." The latter was an easy compromise, she didn't really want to talk to either of them after the way they left things.

 _"This is your only free pass." Edgar said. "Next time we see each other, it's gonna be at opposite ends of a stake."_

The worst part about such an indictment was she knew Edgar actually meant it. He might get him and his brother both killed trying, but he would kill her if he got the chance.

"David'll find out." Paul said, exhaling hard like he was smoking even though he wasn't. "He always does."

Missy huffed. "I don't really care about David." That was both true and untrue. Mostly she just didn't care about David's arbitrary and unfairly stringent rules that only seemed to apply to her. Even if that wasn't true, she thought, preempting the argument she could see between Paul's ears, that was how it felt. Star and Laddie were half-vampires too, and Laddie was just a little boy, yet David gave them way more free reign than he did her. "And don't say it's because they've been half-vampires longer than me." If anything, that should make them less trustworthy than her. Star had to be practically feral her hunger pangs were probably so bad, and she gave no indication that she was ever planning to be a full vampire, something which Missy, albeit reluctantly, had already set a date for.

And oh yeah, she wasn't going around behind David's back wishing he was dead, so there was that.

It was little consolation that David trusted her enough to protect Max's secret, she'd rather not know about him, but despite the fact that David refused to let her go out on her own, that he introduced her to Max said a lot about what David thought about her longevity as a vampire. Terrifying as meeting Max was, it was as close to a compliment as David was capable of giving.

Missy sighed heavily through her nose. "Twenty questions, you said?"

* * *

"Why do you look nervous?" Missy struggled to keep pace with Paul, who was walking away from her like he just got done robbing a bank. The bag was slowing her down, so Paul took it from her without stopping when she got close enough to him for him to take it. She was already out of breath, and sweating again. "Paul!"

"I don't look nervous," Paul said, but the way his feet beat the pavement like it owed him money spoke volumes.

"You can't even see the way you look right now." Missy panted. "You're whiter than a sheet which for a guy who can't get a tan is really saying someTHING!" Paul grabbed her by the elbow without looking and yanked her up next to him. Even with him holding onto her arm, it was tough to keep up with him. "Are we late for something I don't know about?" She huffed, hooking her elbow through Paul's to give her any hope at all of not falling behind. Even so, it felt like Paul was two seconds away from tearing her arm out of the socket anyway.

"Yeah."

Okay.

Missy pulled her arm back and looked both ways before she let Paul drag her across the street. Just because getting creamed by a car wouldn't kill him didn't mean she would be so lucky. But who knows, for all she knew it wouldn't kill her either. Half-vampires could clearly die, just look at Eden, though maybe it was easier for a full vampire to kill a half-vampire, or maybe she was right, and being half human meant she was still 100% vulnerable. "What are we late for?" She asked, knowing full well that Paul was too distracted to answer her.

"What time is it?" Paul asked, trying to grab her left arm with the hand that used to be holding her elbow to look at her watch.

"Easy!" Missy yanked her arm out of his reach, which was harder than it sounded even though she was actually taller than Paul, he had reach on her easily. She spun her watch around to look at it. "It's ten twenty-two, why?"

"Fuck." Paul said, but that was all he said before breaking into what felt like a sprint to Missy, but was really a light jog.

"Is David going to kill you?" Missy asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Paul huffed tensely, but he was smiling under his breath. "Probably, yeah."

The neon lights of the boardwalk hit their faces like the sun in the afternoon, and Missy looped her arm through Paul's again, patting his chest absently. "Just tell him it was my fault. I'm sure he'll blame it on me anyway," she added quietly.

* * *

David, Dwayne and Marko were standing by Paul's bike, theirs were nowhere to be seen. A graveyard of cigarettes of varying degrees of smoked surrounded David's feet.

"You're late," he said right away.

"It was my fault," Missy said, though the look David gave her said he didn't believe her. "I was being slow." Now that David looked like he believed. "But if I had known we had plans," she said tartly. "I would have taken longer."

"Missy, enough." Marko said. "Not the time."

"Why?" Missy asked, reaching out to take her jacket off the back of Paul's bike. "What's happening tonight?" She could hear her heart beating faster already.

"I don't have time to explain to you. Anymore." David said pointedly. He threw his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. "Just keep your mouth shut and your thoughts to yourself," good luck there. "and don't talk to them, even if they talk to you directly, unless I tell you to. Let's go."

Missy put her jacket on and untucked her hair from the collar absently. "They?"

* * *

 **Thank you for reading.**

* * *

 **Attention Breaking Pointers, Missy stans, and Mavid shippers, I have a question for YOU! Two questions, to be exact: what's the biggest unanswered question from The Breaking Point you're most looking forward to having answered in The Ticking Crocodile, and which new character are you most excited about? Returning characters don't count, looking at you Mavid shippers. I'd love to hear from you guys, in the meantime, I'll be over here. The next chapter will be out in—**

 **Get it? It's a Soprano ending. Next chapter will be out when it's out. See you soon!**


	5. No Good Deed

" _We learned not to meet anymore, we don't raise our eyes to one another, but we ourselves won't guarantee what could happen to us in an hour."_

* * *

Chapter 4

* * *

 **RAYMOND**

An hour. "Fifty-seven minutes," Lydia corrected pedantically, which he pointedly ignored.

An hour. That's how long he'd been standing under this goddamn pier with his thumb up his ass like it was high noon at the O.K. corral and he was waiting for a showdown. That or his drug dealer. It was closer to the former, but it wasn't from Max's progeny that he was expecting opposition.

Just promptness.

It didn't surprise him that they —he'd been reliably informed that they were all coming except Max himself, which made sense, you don't put your king piece out front and center, and the three half-vampires, which made even more sense, were late. It annoyed him, but it didn't surprise him. You'd have to get up pretty early to catch him off guard.

Nevertheless, for the first time in a long time, that was what he felt when he realized there were four and a _half_ vampires walking down the slope of the beach like they were in a music video toward them instead of four.

Surprise.

Raymond, and this came as a shock to exactly no one, didn't like surprises. He trusted half-vampires even less, for the same reason most head vampires didn't trust them either, with one foot in the door and one out, it was impossible to know for certain where their loyalty truly laid, and Raymond didn't like uncertainty.

He knew immediately that the reverse King Kong with the chip on her shoulder the size of Southern California was or used to be the human that killed Patrick. She was trying and failing to keep the wild assumptions rattling around her head from spilling out of her ears, mostly about him, he noted, despite his best efforts to blend in with the piling behind him. Smart kid. Not that smart, otherwise she wouldn't be a half-vampire, but still. He'd never liked Patrick, no one did, so he certainly wasn't mourning his passing, but seeing her in person, he found it hard to believe she could have killed Patrick on her own.

Smart money was on Captain Peroxide over there giving him the stink-eye being the other half of the happy murder couple. There was tension between the two of them you could cut with a chainsaw that the little one in the back was being rubbed entirely the wrong way by. The only one who seemed to be unaware of the love triangle was the girl, and the tall blonde one with a whole lot of empty real estate between his ears, but he probably didn't even know where he was right now.

"Fuck you."

Oh and he was an eavesdropper too, but that only proved his point about him. If he'd learned anything over the years it was that more often than not, keeping his mouth shut was the smartest thing to do, the "keep you alive" thing to do, and if the hollow whistling noise he was getting from Scrappy Doo's head and the dirty look the one who looked like his mother shot up bleach during her pregnancy was giving him was any indication, he'd never kept his mouth shut in his life, not even to breath through his nose.

The wind came up like a bad dinner: violently, and though he thought he was safe behind the piling, it still stung Raymond's cheeks with saltwater and pieces of sand-coated rotting wood, but the only one who seemed bothered by it was the young blonde, who spent the better part of a minute picking her hair out of her mouth.

"You're late," Lydia said, with somehow both the theatricality of Vincent Price and the enthusiasm of a death row inmate at ten minutes to midnight simultaneously. Raymond would have squeezed the bridge of his nose if he could actually get headaches and they weren't in mixed company.

"You were early." He who Raymond assumed to be David said mildly, which was an effortless sidestep of taking responsibility that Raymond had absolutely anticipated. He wasn't here because these boys had good judgment, after all.

 _I'm always early,_ he thought so quietly that if they weren't every last one of them vampires, no one would have heard him.

David glanced at him, but otherwise didn't comment.

"Which one of you speaks for Max?" Lydia asked.

David huffed through his nose quietly. "None of us is here to speak for Max. We speak for ourselves, if you want to talk to Max, I'm sure you already know where to find him."

Lydia frowned deeply, not that it was easy to tell with her, she always looked like that to Raymond. "Max does know you're here?"

David took a cigarette out from behind his ear and lit it carefully, blowing the smoke sideways out of the corner of his mouth. The wind coming up from the water blew it directly into the blonde girl's face, and she waved it away violently. "Of course."

"But you don't speak for him."

David laughed. "Clearly you've never met Max."

Lydia couldn't look less amused even if her face didn't already look like a puckered asshole. "Clearly."

"Max played no part in what happened to Patrick," David raised his eyebrows slightly. "unless you're here for something else? I hear the surf is nice."

Lydia didn't miss a step. "So you don't deny that you killed him?" Her hawkish eyes were glued to David now.

"No," David replied, exhaling quietly. His right hand wrapped around the half-vampire's arm absently, and the sound her wrist made when he squeezed it was just barely audible even to them.

The half-vampire glared unflinchingly at him, though the tense line between her untamed eyebrows said just how rough he was being with her. "David didn't kill Patrick," she bit out spitefully without breaking eye contact with him. She yanked her arm out of his hand, but only because he let her, and looked at Lydia directly. "I did."

Raymond laughed quietly with his mouth closed. Say whatever else you wanted about her, she didn't beat around the bush.

"You're the human that killed Patrick?"

The half-vampire's jaw clenched. "I used to be." That was a can of worms they really didn't have time to open.

"Missy," the cigar store mascot said quietly, but she ignored him too. She stepped in front of David.

"Patrick tried to kill me first," she said. "he tortured me."

"That's irrelevant," Lydia said.

"It is not!" Missy said, her pale cheeks turning splotchy, and filling with blood that every one of them could hear.

"Stop talking, Missy." David said, but he sounded too much like Willy Wonka going "stop, don't, come back" to be believable.

"You think David killed Patrick because of me," well, yeah. "he didn't. He doesn't even like me." Keep telling yourself that, kid. "Patrick tried to kill me when I was still human. I just defended myself."

"You did this on your own?" Lydia asked carefully. "No one helped you?"

Missy's heart skipped a beat audibly, but she was still telling the truth as far as Raymond could tell when she said: "They tried to." She tucked her hair behind her ears with both hands, holding the back of her neck nervously. "They wanted to, I think."

"Why didn't they?" Raymond asked. The half-vampire looked over at him suddenly with comically wide eyes.

"David wouldn't let them," she said with a verbal shrug that belied the nervous look in her eyes. "I didn't want them to."

"Why?" Raymond asked. Lydia glanced at him, but didn't comment on his sudden curiosity or talkativeness.

Missy bit her lip so hard it turned white where her teeth made contact with it. "I didn't want them to get in trouble." Despite the fact that she still looked like a cat someone dragged out from under the bed by its tail, her heartbeat was remarkably steady.

"Trouble?" Lydia furrowed her brow. "With whom?"

"I wasn't sure, I just knew there were rules." Only because Dwayne told me, her mind supplied for him. "I couldn't let them kill Patrick because of me, so I lit him on fire."

Raymond was used to seeing memories from other people's perspectives, that was par for the course when you were a vampire, but right away, it was obvious why David had brought the half-vampire with him. Her memories were all over the place, like a ransom note pieced together from seven different magazines, but painfully vivid.

"You lit him on fire?" Lydia asked incredulously.

"Yes," Missy replied.

The little one and the dumbass snickered simultaneously. Lydia barely spared them a glance. "So all of this occurred while you were still human?"

"Yes." Missy said immediately. Raymond saw the trap that Lydia was leading her into before David did, but he still caught on a lot quicker than any of the others did. He tried to catch Missy's eye out of the corner of hers, but she ignored him.

"Patrick tortured you."

"Yes."

"And you killed him."

"Yes."

Lydia tilted her head, pursing her mouth slightly. "How did you know that burning him would stop him?"

Besides the fact that burning anything alive would at the very least ruin its day?

"Well, vampires are really flammable."

David sighed audibly. Missy still didn't realize what the rest of them already had. She'd said too much. She glanced at David nervously now out of the corner of her eye. Why wasn't she reading their minds, Raymond wondered. Maybe she was but she was just dumber than she looked.

"What?" Missy glanced behind her for an explanation, but the dumbass and the little one provided none. Nor did their taller, quieter friend. She looked at David. "What did I say?"

Well, you weren't supposed to say anything at all, said the look David gave her in response, but too much, Missy, too much.

Lydia didn't quite smile, which was just as well, she had one of those faces that almost certainly wouldn't be improved by smiling, closing her trap behind Missy. "How did you know that Patrick was a vampire?"

The dumbass swore under his breath, revealing that he was finally up to speed with the rest of them, but it took Missy another couple of seconds to catch up. "He basically told me," she said nervously. "I think." Raymond could barely keep up with her thoughts now. "I don't remember," Missy said. "I was being tortured at the time," she added tartly. "Does it matter? He's dead."

Not really, Raymond thought, but Lydia was determined to go through the rigamarole of pretending this was about anything other than what it actually was, so.

If there was anything he hated more than vampires, it was vampire politics.

"It matters," Lydia said carefully. "because you were, by your own admission, human when Patrick was killed."

"So?" Missy unconsciously took a step back defensively, as if it made a difference.

"So how did you know vampires were real?" Lydia asked.

Crap, Missy thought.

"Crap indeed." Raymond replied.

* * *

"So. How did you know?" To her credit, Missy was trying very hard not to let her subconscious throw her friends under the bus, bur she was also, obviously, too honest for her own good.

"I saw their reflections." Or lack thereof, obviously, and dollars to donuts she was talking about the Wonder Twins, though she neither incriminated them nor denied it. "I just got lucky. They didn't tell me," she was quick to add. "I figured it out on my own." A metaphorical brick wall appeared in Missy's subconscious, but not before Raymond was able to glean two words from Missy's thoughts that curiously peaked his interest, and only because he was really looking. Edgar and Alan. Whoever they were, and they had to be important to her, otherwise she wouldn't have been so obvious about trying to hide them from him, Missy really didn't want any of them, namely him, Lydia, and to a much lesser extent Luther, to know about them.

"That's irrelevant." Lydia said.

"Oh, THAT'S irrelevant?" The blonde with the mind of a dead Stephen Hawking snapped incredulously. Mighty Mouse took a cheap shot at his ribs with his elbow which mercifully shut him up.

"Why is that irrelevant?" Missy asked.

"Because she doesn't really care, she's just being a bitch." Paul, according to Missy's thoughts, said bluntly. "She's saying we should've killed you when we found out you knew."

Missy chewed on her lip, peeling tiny pieces of skin off with her flat front teeth, only stopping when she drew blood. "Not for lack of trying," she looked pointedly at David, who deigned to smile somewhat despite himself. "but that's kind of a moot point now, isn't it?" She glanced at the one whose name Raymond didn't know, let's just call him Tonto. "I mean, I'm already a vampire. Half anyway."

"You know, that's a really good point." Paul slung his arm around her neck, pulling her backwards against his front. He rested his chin on her shoulder and raised his eyebrows pointedly at Lydia. "What else you got?"

"Paul," David said carefully.

"It's not a moot point," Lydia said.

"Regardless," David said. "it's already been addressed by Max. If you have a problem with his decision, you know where he is. Feel free to ask him to justify himself."

Raymond unfortunately knew Lydia well enough by now to know that the look on her face wasn't just because she was a butterface. She wanted to argue, but Raymond was sick to death of this line of inquiry, and of pretending that he or anyone else gave a shit about Patrick or this newborn giraffe of a half-vampire who killed him. If Lydia wanted to waste her time making Sadie and Park's wet dreams of finding some technicality to fuck Max on come true, that was her business, but he wasn't sticking his neck out any further than he had to. "Lydia," he said, killing the next words out of her mouth in the crib. She clenched her jaw, but said nothing.

"That's not why we're here." Not why he was here, at least. He couldn't give any less of a crap about Patrick, neither could Lydia for that matter, but she was nothing if not Park's little bitch, and if he said roll over, she'd roll over, and if he sicced her on Max, she wasn't letting go until she had her teeth in his ass, which was more of an indication of Lydia's tenacity than it was Park's particular ability to inspire loyalty. Park inspired a lot of things in Raymond, chiefly eye rolls, but loyalty wasn't one of them.

"So why are you here?" David was the only one to acknowledge Raymond's grave tone of voice directly.

"Yeah," the one called Paul said. "'cause if you wanted to fight you should've brought more than Tiny Tim," addressing Lydia only still as if he hadn't spoken.

Lydia scoffed quietly through her nose. "If we were here for that reason, we wouldn't be having this conversation." And the half-vampire would already be dead, Raymond thought mildly. Though the reaction he was rewarded with was decidedly not.

The locals responded, with the exception of David, who seemed to be the only one who had any idea what "playing it close to the vest" meant, to his not so thinly inferred threat exactly the way he expected them to, with the little one reaching over and dragging her behind him by the arm pointedly. Honestly he was just surprised they didn't outright piss on her right in front of him.

Of all the bad habits a vampire could acquire throughout his presumably long life, sentimentality was probably the most egregious.

Missy tellingly didn't react, proving to Raymond that she either didn't believe that they really would kill her if they wanted to, or she severely overestimated her boys' ability to keep her safe, or, and Raymond was leaning toward the latter, she couldn't read his mind. That wouldn't surprise him. She was a month old at best if their time-line of the events preceding Patrick's death was accurate, she could probably barely hear her own thoughts. She'd be hard-pressed to tell him what number he was thinking of even if he asked her to.

 _Isn't that right, Tonto?_

The rest of them had been scratching at the door like a dog to be let in, but none of them seemed as interested, or as frustrated in their denial, in what was going on inside his head as the Indian was. He obviously wasn't used to being shut out by anyone, least of all a stranger. Raymond couldn't blame him, his buddies weren't exactly "The Sound and the Fury", his mind probably was a lot harder to read by comparison. That, of course, wasn't saying much. That was a lot like being the tallest midget in the room.

"Then why are you here?" Missy asked, proving how useless her short friend was as a human shield.

"To warn you," Raymond replied. Even in the dark, it was easy to see that she was looking at him, her lips parted in fear, presumably, if her obnoxiously loud heartbeat, and the sharp, almost clinical smell of adrenaline was anything to go by. He gave her credit though, she was pigheaded as hell, clenching her jaw despite the fact that she knew he could read her mind.

"Warn us about what?" She asked. "I didn't think you guys gave straight answers ever. I mean, nobody thought it was a good idea to warn me about the psychotic vampire stalking me." She hit David with a look that could wilt concrete, and made Raymond almost sorry that she was definitely going to die. Only being half wouldn't save her, just like only being twelve hadn't him. Monsters didn't have principles, and the most dangerous kind of monster was the one who thought he was doing God's work, though Raymond didn't even know if he thought Dutton was wrong about that anymore. "So forgive me if I'm a little skeptical about your supposedly good intentions."

Fair enough, but she didn't have to believe him, none of them did. They could all die for all he cared, he was only doing this out of some misguided respect for Simon, and because he cared too much about his own skin to say no outright to Sadie. Maybe he was just trying to lighten the load on what was already a very damned soul. One good deed wouldn't make a difference, but neither would doing nothing, he was damned regardless, and he doubted very much if God gave a damn about any of them, by which he meant vampires. Present company included.

He could feel Lydia's eyes on his forehead. She was waiting for him to get to the point, somewhat hypocritically if you asked him, but not patiently. "First of all," he said, making it clear in no uncertain terms just with his tone just how much he didn't want to be here. "I don't care about Patrick. Or Max's ever growing collection of half-vampires." This time he heard Lydia's jaw clench, but as badly as she wanted to contradict him regarding their actual agenda, she was too well-trained to do it in front of company. At least out loud. Her thoughts weren't nearly as charitable when it came to the chain of command and how she felt about him being in charge. "Patrick," he said mildly. "was a psychopath."

"Yeah, no shit."

"Paul," David said, with a tone of voice that would brook no argument from the taller blonde, and made it abundantly clear that this would be the last time he told him this tonight. "enough."

Surprisingly, at least to Raymond, Paul had enough sense to recognize a last warning when he heard one, and wisely shut his mouth.

"Those of us present who had the misfortune of meeting the late Patrick," he glanced at Missy, who spitefully held his gaze. "know that besides being crazier than a dog in a hubcap factory, he was good at drawing attention to himself. No shit, indeed." He added to Missy, who clenched her teeth quietly and started doing multiplications in her head. "That's why he never stayed in one place for very long. Of course, that just meant more bodies in more places, even the human police can't ignore that, but fortunately for them, and us, they wouldn't know how to deal with it even if they knew what they were dealing with." Lucky for the human police, but then again, if they'd known all it took to get Patrick out of their asses for good was loosing a teenager from the Pacific Northwest on him, Sadie and Park would probably kill themselves out of embarrassment. "Unfortunately for all of us, he got himself on the radar of someone who does."

"Does what?" Paul asked, before he or anyone else could stop himself.

Raymond let out a prolonged sigh. "Know what they're dealing with, moron."

Missy, proving once again that appearances were deceiving, because she certainly looked dumber, asked: "What do you mean? A vampire hunter?" The assembled vampires all looked at her, but it was Raymond who snapped his fingers and pointed at her, saying "Bingo." deadpan.

Missy's mind and heart started to race. It had been a minute since Raymond had been around anyone with a beating heart for longer than the obvious, and it was honestly making his head hurt, but far be it from him to tell other vampires what kind of company to keep.

"A vampire hunter." The dumbass said incredulously.

The little one rolled his eyes. "There hasn't been a vampire hunter that actually knew what they were doing _ever_ ," he said. "it's always some Count of Monte Cristo wannabe who's seen one too many movies."

"This one does." Raymond replied darkly. "Trust me."

There was a moment of silence punctuated only by scoffs from Tweedles Dee and Dumbass.

"Who is he?" David asked at the same time that Missy did "What does he want?"

Raymond licked his lips, chewing on the grains of sand between his molars. "His name is Charles Thomas Dutton," the name drew looks of recognition from David and Tonto, and despite themselves, Raymond saw Lydia and Luther tense up out of the corner of his eye. "and he's a vampire hunter, sweetheart, what do you think he wants?" He glanced at David. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say you've heard of him." The expression of David's face all but confirmed this.

"Who is he?" Missy asked.

"Death," Raymond said simply. "and he's coming for you."

"Why? We didn't do anything to him!"

Raymond huffed. "I don't mean to tell you your business, but I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what vampires are." Her expression crumpled. "The Reverend believes he's a righteous man. By virtue of what you are, you have it coming. As far as he's concerned he's just doing the Lord's work."

"Why would your Reverend come here?"

Raymond glanced at the dark-haired one who spoke. "Besides the fact that your town is charmingly known as the _murder capital of the world_ thanks to you?" They, with the exception of David and Missy, collectively gave him a shitty look. "Patrick," he said. "We don't know where The Reverend picked up his scent, somewhere near New Orleans, we think, it doesn't matter, but he followed him, and Patrick led him right to you."

The look on Missy's face, if Raymond cared about her at all, would have been heartbreaking. She really never was going to get away from Patrick, she thought. Patrick was dead, but they were still in danger because of him.

"Whatever," Paul said, looking at Missy out of the corner of his eye. "we can take him." Surprising exactly no one, Raymond thought.

He scoffed quietly. "And you're obviously going to be the first to die."

"Hey, fuck you, Thumbelina!" Paul lunged forward, but the little one caught him by both arms and held him still.

"Correction," Raymond held up one finger without taking his hands out of his pockets, and indicated Missy with his chin. "she'll probably be the first to die." This time it was more than just the dumb one who showed his teeth.

Luther, finally remembering that he wasn't just here to carry Raymond's purse, appeared in front of him, standing so close that his back was touching his front, which considering he was still leaning up against the piling, felt a little unnecessary.

Raymond sighed.

"We didn't have to warn you." Lydia said, scowling, but then again, that could have just been her face. "We could have just left you all to die."

"Well to be fair, they're still probably going to die," Raymond said absently.

"Fuck you too!" Paul shouted, at Lydia more than him.

"Paul."

The waves lapped weakly around the pilings, and from this distance, the roar of the wooden roller coaster sounded like rain.

"David," Missy said, barely audible even for them over Paul and Lydia going at each other's throats. "I hear something."

"Shut up, Missy." David replied automatically.

That she didn't immediately snap back at him should've been the first clue that something was really wrong. "No, David," she grabbed his arm blindly. "I really hear something."

Raymond heard it too, too late, because Missy's heart was so loud by comparison, it drowned almost everything else out but his own thoughts.

A second heartbeat.

Shit.

"Luther—" The first bolt hit him directly in his center mass as he turned to look at Raymond, just to the right of his heart. The next one was a bulls-eye.

Raymond hit the deck.

Blood spurted violently out of Luther's nose and mouth like a hose was pumping it directly up his throat from his own asshole, spraying Missy across the face. She gasped, and immediately coughed when Luther's blood got in her mouth.

Raymond felt Lydia hit the sand beside him.

"Get down!" David shouted. The little one grabbed Missy from behind and body slammed her face first onto the sand, covering her head with his forearm as Luther did his best impression of an empty tube of toothpaste, his insides becoming not, a dark red, wet mess that barely resembled organs anymore, shoved all at once out of his mouth, leaking blood and stomach bile out of his nose.

Luther's corpse collapsed on the sand next to Luther's innards like an empty bag, rapidly desiccating out of the corner of Raymond's eye.

"What the fuck?" That sounded like Paul, but Raymond was too afraid to lift his head, even though he wasn't expecting a third shot.

How had he miscalculated so badly? He could see Luther's corpse even without moving his head. The realization that it could just as easily have been him made him want to vomit. He'd been so wrong. Dutton wasn't on his way to Santa Carla.

He was already here.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading.**


	6. High Noon

**For my sister, happy belated birthday.**

* * *

 _"In battle, if you make your opponent flinch, you have already won."_

* * *

Chapter 5

* * *

 **DUTTON**

The boardwalk was like a living thing, the throng moving constantly, without purpose. Like the blood running through his veins they did so without thought or passion, seemingly drawn to the lights and the beating heart of the boardwalk simply because they were there. Like a herd of zebra crowding around a watering hole, these people were unaware of the predators that waited for them in the dark, but fortunately for them, the only thing hunting tonight was him.

Everywhere he looked there were signs of the things he sought. There were the ones only he recognized, and then there were the ones that even the civilians could see, layers of missing persons flyers, each one older than the last, dating as far back as the nineteen sixties that he could see. The distinct absence of security guards on the main thoroughfare felt pointed, almost intentional, but still, he thought, as a young boy ran into him, then past him, mothers didn't cling to their children. They left them defenseless, foolishly believing that they would be safe despite the fact that there were so many children on that board, as if the things he sought had any such scruples. They had no souls, why should they have morals?

A woman, a girl even, she couldn't have been too far away from eighteen if she was a day, wearing a one piece bathing suit under a pair of cutoff jeans, pulled her child out of his way and against her body. The look she gave him said that she understood, instinctively, that he was dangerous. He wondered how many times she had unknowingly felt the shadow, metaphorically speaking, of a vampire fall on her and felt safe. It didn't matter. He wasn't here for her, or her boy, who she held tightly against her as he passed by them, and moreover, she wasn't wrong. He was dangerous. Whether he was more or less so than the creatures he hunted was a matter of perspective. To a fly, a spider was a monster. It made no difference that he was physically weaker and slower than the animals he was after. Most hunters could say the same. Every vampire he had ever killed was stronger than him, and faster than him, and it had made no difference for them in the end either.

This time, it would make no difference either.

A bell rang as he passed by a shooting gallery game, deafening the man so that he barely heard the teenager with the uneven facial hair ask him if he wanted to try his luck. The game was made almost entirely of vintage metal painted green. The targets were all shaped like animals, a bottom row of slow moving yellow ducks, a stationary row of white hawks at the top of the machine, and a rotating circle of white rabbits that folded down at irregular intervals to make them more difficult to hit.

Dutton looked at the air rifle the teenager was holding, then down at the thick black watch band on the same wrist. The watch was turned around so he couldn't see the face. "What time is it?" He asked. The teenager blinked, either because he was confused by the question or surprised by his accent, either way, the trouth mouth the boy was giving him didn't answer his question.

"What?" The teenager asked.

"The time," he said again.

The teenager moved the air rifle to his left hand and looked at his watch. "Seven-thirty, why?"

Dutton glanced at the setting sun out beyond the edge of the boardwalk's glow, the pink-orange sky was already turning inky blue at the corners. The sun would be down in less than thirty minutes. There was a grace period after vampires woke up where they were, besides when they were sleeping, at their most vulnerable, before they fed, but it was also during this time when they were the most dangerous, while they were out hunting, like him. There was no such thing as an even playing field with vampires, but it would be longer than a half hour before they came here. They wouldn't sleep closer than thirty-minutes away from the boardwalk, no matter how young and stupid they were. No vampire would lay his head down anywhere someone like him could come wandering in off the street to take it off. No, they would be far away from this much light and noise.

Butchers didn't sleep in the same pasture as their cattle.

He glanced back at the teenager to see that he was still staring at him. "I'll play."

The teenager handed him the air rifle wordlessly. Dutton carefully lowered his duffel bag to the ground and grabbed the rifle. He raised it surely and took aim at the first white rabbit.

* * *

"Winner," the teenager said, with an upward inflection at the end like he was asking a question. He didn't react otherwise, not even to take the air rifle back from Dutton, who carefully set it down on the front of the machine and bent slightly at the knees to pick up his duffel bag. The teenager numbly reached up and dragged a large, cheap stuffed animal off the shelf behind him and all but threw it at Dutton, who caught it by pinning it against his chest with his arm when it hit him. "Are you in the army or something?" The teenager asked quietly. "That was amazing."

"Once." Dutton said, tucking the stiff toy under his arm so he could hand the teenager a few neatly folded dollar bills. "Have a safe night now."

"You too, man." The teenager gave him a curious look, but said nothing else.

"I intend to." Dutton said mildly.

Even with the sky growing darker at the edges by the minute, it took almost no time at all to retrace his steps, and even less effort to find the young mother again, and the child who was waiting in line for the carousel behind her, albeit far less patiently. Without stopping, he set the bear down next to the little boy, leaning it against the child's small legs, and patted the top of his head like the banister of a staircase as he passed them without a word.

The night was still unbearably hot, even as the sun began to set in earnest, and the wood beneath his feet, still damp from the afternoon thunderstorm, gave off the scent of a rotting stump.

As the sun finally set, at nearly eight p.m. on the dot, more people came up from the beach bringing the smell of saltwater and sand with them, leaving the wooden benches near the exits to the beach empty for him to sit.

He put his duffel bag on the ground between his legs but didn't push it under the bench with his feet, sitting sideways on the edge of the seat so he could watch the beach and the boardwalk simultaneously. Closer to the water, it was cooler out, and the sweat on his temples, far from drying on its own, tickled the fine hairs along the edge of his scalp. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and looked out among the people and the lights, but not impatiently. He may not have as long as the things he was waiting for, but he still had all night.

* * *

Dutton believed in many things: God, vampires, but he had never considered fate, beyond an extension of the Lord's will, to be one of them until he saw Raymond again. It had been decades since he saw Raymond last, even longer since he saw him as a boy, and while time had been noticeably kinder to one of them, fate had not been so to Raymond.

It wasn't Raymond that brought him to Santa Carla, but he refused to believe it was a coincidence that his and Raymond's arrival at this town should coincide so if it wasn't God's will.

Dutton believed in many things: God, vampires, fate, but not coincidence.

If Raymond was here, his reasons for being so could not be so very different from his own. Raymond was careful, there was a good reason their paths hadn't crossed in so many years, so if he was here, at the same time that he was here, however unknowingly, it was not by his choice.

Raymond, like he, was here for the vampires who lived here, albeit with very different motives, but it was Raymond nevertheless who would lead him right to them, for if Raymond was here for the reason he suspected, it would only be a matter of time before he made contact.

* * *

Nearly three hours. That was how long "only a matter of time" was, evidently, for that was how long he waited, after the sun had set, for the rest of the vampires to show themselves.

There were eight vampires under the pier, including Raymond, five local and three visitors, of which Raymond was one, more than he was expecting, but eight vampires or eighty, it didn't change his plans.

He made sure to stay downwind of them, even if it was unlikely that they would be able to pick his scent out from the others still lingering on the beach and the foreign vampires. Being this close to the pungent water increased his chances of going undetected, but he wasn't taking any. It was hard enough to get the element of surprise when it came to vampires, and he could never let himself forget just how much faster they were than him. He couldn't hear what they were saying, not this far away, but they could, if he wasn't careful. The sand muffled the sound of him opening his duffel bag, and he assembled and loaded the crossbow slowly, waiting for the roller coaster to come back around and hide the noise. He took a slow, quiet breath and carefully raised the crossbow.

Still, as cautious as he was some things couldn't be expected. He missed. With vampires, it was never a good idea to miss, there was no guarantee you'd have enough time to get a second shot off, but Dutton was no stranger to vampires, he was well acquainted with their physical capabilities, as well as the limitations of an otherwise human brain.

While they tried to figure out where the first shot came from, he carefully reloaded the crossbow and fired again. Immediately after loosing the second bolt, he started to break the crossbow down again and repack it into his duffel bag.

It wasn't important that he killed all of them, or as many as he was able to, now, killing the biggest one would suffice for tonight, and Raymond would give the seven remaining vampires his message, before he most likely fled, but he wasn't concerned with Raymond tonight either. He hadn't thought about the boy that Raymond used to be in decades. He had failed the boy he used to be, a long time ago, and he would make it right some night, but it wouldn't be this one. Tonight, Raymond would pass on his message, and tomorrow night, he would begin hunting the rest of them.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading.**


	7. A Bit Of Advice

_For my sister, newly married. May the happiness in your marriage have the longevity of an immortal._

* * *

" _Scent and a sound, I'm lost and I'm found, and I'm hungry like the wolf."_

* * *

Chapter 6

* * *

 **MISSY**

The damp sand stuck to the blood on her face as Marko leaned his weight onto the arm that was covering the back of her head, pressing her cheek harder into the wet sand. Sand tumbled in the corners of her mouth when she screamed reflexively, and she felt someone, Marko, she assumed, squeeze her hand hard to make her breathe, but she couldn't seem to stop screaming. Her ears were ringing, and the adrenaline flooding through what felt like her stomach, coupled with the sight of the bald vampire turning inside out like a tube of toothpaste, made her feel like if she had anything at all in her stomach, she'd throw up. "What. Happened?" She screamed. Marko's hand awkwardly half-petted the back of her head. "What happened?"

"Shut up and keep your head down," David said, barely lifting his. Missy raised her head just enough for Marko to slip his arm under it so her chin was propped up on it instead of buried in the sand. It was hard to look at the dead vampire —what was left of him on the sand seemed so much smaller than he'd been when he was alive. She turned her head as much as Marko's weight on top of her would physically let her, away from the dead vampire.

The little boy vampire was lying flat on his stomach in the cold sand with his jacket flipped up over his head, he looked even younger with his little pale face half hidden in the sand, frightened and frailer.

The girl vampire rolled away from the big vampire's gooey corpse, but didn't get up, staying down on her hands and knees. Missy could see how tense her jaw was from where she was. She stuck her hand deep in the pile of red jelly that used to be her friend. Her hand made a quiet squelching sound like someone sticking their foot into a bowl of mayonnaise when she pulled it out, and Missy shut her eyes, gagging. She pulled out two arrows and held them up so they could all see them.

Missy squeezed the arm that belonged to the hand that had grabbed her roughly earlier so tightly that her own fingers hurt. She didn't realize it was David's until she counted how many hands Marko had and realized that he suddenly had three. She let go of David's arm, shoving her hands in the sand beside her and making fists. She felt like she was hyperventilating and holding her breath at the same time.

She also felt like she was choking on sand.

"Marko, let me up."

"David," Marko said, choosing instead to ignore her, so she elbowed him in the ribs, which worked just as well as asking him to let go did.

"Raymond," the girl vampire said, holding the arrows up so he could see them.

The little boy vampire glared and angrily flipped his jacket back off his head. "Yeah, I saw them, Lydia." He got to his knees carefully, brushing sand off his cheek. His remaining companion reached over and grabbed his arm to yank him back down.

"Raymond," she said, not quite yelling, but Missy could tell that this was probably as close to panicked as she ever got.

"He's gone," Raymond said. "get off me." He stood up, but he was the only one.

"Are you sure?" Missy could barely hear anything over her own heartbeat at this point, let alone whoever killed the big vampire, but she tried anyway, holding her breath to force her heart to slow down. Raymond turned and looked at her directly over his shoulder.

"What do you think?"

Missy didn't hear it anymore. "I don't hear anything anymore."

"That's because he's gone." Raymond said, scratching the sand that had stuck to his friend's blood on his cheek off with his thumbnail. "He was gone after the second shot." He grimaced down at the dead vampire and kicked his body gently. He sighed "damn it" under his breath.

Paul was on his feet before any of them could stop him, lunging at Raymond and grabbing him by the lapels of his coat. "You asshole!"

"Paul!" Missy shouted. Marko and Dwayne stood up, almost simultaneously. Missy did too, but half-vampire or not, she wasn't getting in between Paul and Raymond.

Raymond, to his credit, didn't make it worse by pushing Paul, reaching up to scratch the side of his face tiredly, picking bits of blood and sand off his skin.

"Paul, let him go." Missy said. David put his elbow in front of her stomach and slowly pushed her behind him. "It's not his fault." Made all the more obvious by the fact that it was his friend lying dead at their feet and not one of them.

"This little piece of shit led him right to us!" Paul said, his face inches from Raymond's.

"He was coming here with or without me," Raymond said. He huffed quietly. "I just wasn't expecting to still be here at the time." He grabbed Paul's hands on his lapels and pried them off. "And I don't plan on sticking around either, so get off me." He shoved Paul away from him, and Marko and Dwayne caught him before he could do any more damage.

"Why did he stop?" Marko asked. "Why waste two shots on your friend instead of one of us?"

Missy glanced at the dead vampire over David's shoulder, swallowing audibly. "He was the biggest target." The full vampires all looked at her, even Lydia. "Maybe he was the most afraid of him." Raymond scoffed. "And he missed," she pointed out. "The first arrow missed his heart."

"Bolt," Lydia corrected her automatically. "Arrows come from bows. These came from a crossbow."

Missy glanced sidelong at her but didn't comment. "If you hadn't called his name, he wouldn't have moved." Raymond looked at her, but didn't say anything.

"So why stop shooting at all?" Marko asked, letting go of Paul now that he seemed to have calmed down.

"What, did he only bring two arrows?" The latter asked.

"Bolts." Lydia said again.

"Whatever."

"Believe me, if he wanted to kill all of us, he wouldn't have brought a crossbow." Raymond said. "He'd have used a Molotov." He added. "He just wanted to send a message."

"Which is?" David asked.

Raymond glanced sidelong at him. "That he's here. He wants you to know that he's here, and none of you will be spared." He wiped his hand on the back of his pants and then through his hair. He sighed. "So that when you're all being picked off later you'll know that the only reason you were left alive tonight is because he wanted you to be."

Missy reached sideways and Paul grabbed her hand without even having to be asked. She squeezed his hand and he gave her a rare look of concern. At least for him it was rare.

"You want my advice?" Raymond asked.

"Not really." Marko said absently.

Raymond held his hand out to Lydia and she wordlessly handed him the arrows. "Leave town. Leave the country, leave the planet, because that's the only way you'll ever be free of him. And do it tonight, because it might take two years, or twenty, but he'll catch up to you eventually. Maybe if you're lucky you can avoid him for the next few decades like I did and he'll die of old age. But I wouldn't hold your breath. So to speak."

"So that's it?" Missy asked. "We're all just going to die?" She never wanted to be a vampire in the first place. Until recently she thought that the boys would be the death of her, Patrick very nearly _was._ She couldn't make it through all that just to die here, now. Even God wouldn't be that cruel.

Raymond scoffed. "You've clearly never read the good book." He slapped David in the chest with the arrows. "Good luck. Lydia," he added, turning to walk away. She immediately followed him without so much as glancing at their dead friend.

"You know," Paul said, letting go of Missy's hand and stepping forward again. This time no one stopped him. "Why the hell did you even come here if you were just gonna fuck off and leave your shit," he indicated the dead vampire by kicking his corpse hard. "for us to clean up."

Raymond stopped and zipped his jacket up, sighing. "I came here, against my better judgment, I might add, so stow the attitude, because I was told to come here. That's all." He glanced over his shoulder at them, and Missy met his eyes tiredly. "You've been warned," he looked away, adding quietly, "you're on your own. If I were you, I'd go home, not all at once, and not together. Forget safety in numbers, he's not afraid to try and kill you in front of people, you might as well stay here and wait for sunrise if you make yourselves this obvious."

Missy found it hard to believe that anyone would be suicidal enough to take on four full vampires in a fair fight. She'd experienced first hand what happens when you try to kill a vampire, she was just lucky her eye had healed. Of course, maybe if she'd had a crossbow that would have been a different story.

She still couldn't believe the big vampire died like that. She could feel the sand sticking to the blood on her face. She'd seen two and a half vampires die now, Patrick, Eden, and Luther, and seven people total if you counted the four girls David and the boys killed in front of her, and even though she wasn't totally human anymore, it never got easier. If she had any food in her stomach at all she would have thrown up by now. It was almost a blessing that she didn't.

She didn't understand when she said it then how right she'd been about Patrick, about vampires being afraid to die, even more than she was afraid to die.

A couple of months ago, she would have said dying was the worst thing she could imagine, even if that wasn't how she really felt. Staying with Renee would have been worse. Losing her mom and dad, that was worse. Seeing Patrick kill Eden right in front of her, feeling like she was going crazy, not even knowing, still, now, if Eden was ever really on her side (or if it was all Patrick from the very beginning), being haunted by a psychotic vampire ghost, being set on _fire_. Knowing that in less than a month, she'd either be dead or a murderer —all that was worse.

Almost dying and being half-dead really put a lot of things into perspective, mostly dying. She thought about her death a lot since she came to Santa Carla, more specifically, since meeting the boys. She hoped it wouldn't happen, then just that it wouldn't hurt, that it would be quick, and then while Patrick was torturing her, just that it would be over with.

She had no illusions about any of the boys being good people —they weren't even technically people, but the fact that the dead vampire's blood on her face could have just as easily been any of theirs, that it was that easy to kill any one of them, despite how strong and how fast they were, made her sick to the very pit of her stomach.

"Splitting up is a bad idea," Missy said. Maybe they were easier to pick out of a crowd when they were together, but they were no better than fish in a barrel on their own. Maybe that was an overstatement. She didn't doubt that David and the boys could take care of themselves, but she barely felt human these days —and not just because she was a half-vampire. She could barely get out of bed at night anymore for how tired and sick she felt all the time, let alone fight.

Raymond looked at her critically.

"Someone always suggests splitting up in horror movies and they usually die first."

Raymond scoffed. "This isn't a movie, sweetheart."

"Oh, no," Missy said dryly. "because this is real life and we're vampires."

Raymond briefly raised his eyebrows as if to say "point taken". "Oh," he held up one finger. "since we've established that you're all determined to be stupid and die, in that order, here's another free piece of advice for you not to listen to: stay away from Max." For Missy, that made sense. Max was the head vampire, it wouldn't do for them to lead a vampire hunter right to him. "Or don't, lead the Reverend right to him, what do I care?" He glanced at her, taking a visible albeit unnecessary breath quietly. "And if you care about _her_ at all, don't leave her alone."

Despite her acidic expression, Missy's heart still skipped a beat. "I'm not even a vampire yet," she said petulantly.

Raymond shrugged unhappily. "Close enough."

You are who you hang with. Figures David would be the death of her even if he wasn't the one killing her.

"What are you going to do?" David asked, though Missy largely suspected he already knew.

"Take my own advice," the childlike, if only in appearance, vampire said. "get out of town. Put an ocean between us if I have to."

Missy wiped her face with the back of her hand, looked at it, then wiped her face again vigorously. "Is it safe, do you think?" She asked quietly. "For us to leave?"

Raymond raised his eyebrows softly and sighed. "Safer than staying here."

Missy didn't disagree. Right about now all she wanted to do was go home, pretend this, like everything else in her life, wasn't happening, and sleep until it actually wasn't. But she didn't know if she'd ever be able to sleep again after tonight, not knowing that there was a vampire hunter walking around Santa Carla right now, which wouldn't have made a difference to her if she and most of the people she cared about weren't half and vampires respectively. "What if he's still out there?"

"He is," Raymond replied automatically. "But there's nothing you can do about that. You can't stay here all night. Well, _you_ can." He indicated Missy with his chin. "But those are your options, take your chances, and Dutton will probably kill you, or stay here like cowards and the sun definitely will."

"You have a lot of nerve talking about cowardice," Missy said. "you're running away."

"I never said I wasn't a coward," Raymond said hotly. "I'm just a dumb one. If I was a smart coward, I'd just stay out here until sunrise and burn."

"I guess you're not that much of a coward after all." Missy said.

"I guess not." Raymond said thoughtfully. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked quietly at the dead vampire on the ground. There was almost nothing left of him at this point, his skin had dried out and tightened against his bones like shrink wrap. He probably weighed less than she did now. She didn't know him at all, she didn't even really remember his name. Raymond didn't seem that broken up about his passing either, but she couldn't help but ask: "Is there someone who we need to...tell about him? Family? A girlfriend?"

Raymond scoffed. "You know you really don't have to tell people how long you've been a half-vampire."

Missy's eyebrows and jaw tightened simultaneously.

Raymond kicked a little bit of sand on the bald vampire's body. "This is what we are, and this is what happens to us when we die." He lightly stepped on Luther's back and one of his arms snapped off on its own like a dry branch. "We disappear, and the only people who mourn us are monsters, or dead. No family, or friends. People like us don't get either."

Missy's heart still physically hurt when she thought about Edgar and Alan, and to a lesser extent, Renee. There was no love lost between her and her step mother, but David had effectively taken away any hope of that ever changing by making Renee forget about her. They'd be on bad terms forever now, because as far as Renee knew she was dead, and that was the way it had to stay. She wasn't mad at David, not for that anyway, but she knew his motives were largely selfish for doing what he did, so it was hard to be grateful to him.

It started to rain, water dripping down between the cracks in the pier and hitting her eyelashes, making her blink repeatedly.

Raymond stared at her, blinking through the rain that he was standing directly in. "I meant what I said." He tilted his head back so the rain slicked his hair back from his face. "I know this man. This only ends one way."

Missy tucked her hair behind her ears with both hands. She shook her head and Raymond looked at her before she even spoke. "I can't believe that," she said. She shook her head sadly again. "It's not fair, and I know I say that a lot, but this—this really sucks. I didn't even want to be a vampire in the first place, but I am now, and after everything I've been through" her mom and Renee besides, she was tortured a few weeks ago, she almost died, she was turned into a vampire against her will, and forced to have a scary dinner with the head vampire.

She hadn't had a break in seventeen years. The closest she got to one was almost dying. "I'm not giving up now." She sighed with her mouth closed, furrowing her eyebrows. "I'm not. I can't." She didn't get set on fire just to die now.

Raymond huffed in amusement. "I probably won't be, but I kind of hope I end up being wrong about you."

Missy hoped so too.

Raymond grabbed the collar of his jacket with both hands and pulled it up so the rain wouldn't run down his back. "Good luck. Let's go, Lydia."

The rain started to pick up and Missy looked at the somber faces around her. Paul looked like a wet sheepdog. "What are we going to do now?" She asked.

David glanced sidelong at her. "Marko. Dump the body in the ocean."

Marko nodded, but didn't say anything.

David looked at Paul. "Paul."

"Yeah, I got Missy." Paul interjected, but David ignored him.

"Paul, take Missy home."

"Right." Paul grabbed her elbow, but Missy didn't move.

"Paul?" David raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah?"

"Straight home."

"Wait," Missy pulled on her elbow. "what are you going to do?" She asked.

David looked at her. "I need to find Star and Laddie."

Missy's heart dropped into her stomach when she remembered that Star and Laddie were out here too. "David, they don't know what's going on, they're not safe out here."

"I know, Missy."

"You have to find them!"

"I know." David said again. "Paul, take her home. Now."

"Wait," Missy pulled on her arm again. "what about Dwayne?"

Missy could see David's patience wearing thinner than the soles of her thrift store sneakers. "Don't worry about him, Missy, he has his own job to do." David didn't elaborate.

"Be safe." Missy said, chewing absently on her lip.

"Careful, Missy." David said. "Someone might think you care about us."

Missy glared at him. "Shut up and be careful." She finally let Paul pull her out from under the shelter of the pier and into the pouring rain. Her hair flattened against the sides of her face and neck instantly. It was freezing cold even though the night was still unbearably hot.

She could feel her breath catch in her throat as they walked. Even with Paul holding her arm, she felt incredibly exposed and alone, surrounded by the sound of her own erratic heartbeat, fear sitting in her empty stomach like a brick she swallowed whole. She felt like she had a target on her back, even though the vampire hunter already had a chance to kill her tonight and hadn't. Every hair on her body felt like it was standing on end, like when you were outside during a thunderstorm and there was a lot of electricity in the air.

She pulled her arm up so Paul's hand slid down it so she could hold his hand. It made her feel marginally better, at least temporarily.

Missy laughed breathlessly when she saw Paul's bike. Like making it to home base in a game of tag, she already felt safer. But Paul's bike wasn't the only reason she felt so relieved.

"Star!" She was standing next to Paul's bike, holding her jacket closed with one hand on her chest.

"Missy?"

"Star!" Paul let go of Missy's hand and jogged over to her, impulsively throwing his arms around Star. "Man, I'm happy to see you."

"Paul?" Star tried to back up, but Paul's arms were on top of hers, pinning them down. "Missy, what's going on?"

"It's too weird and hard to explain right now, but we're all in danger. David's out looking for you." He was, to clarify, not the reason they were all in danger.

"Where's Laddie?" Paul asked.

"I don't know." Star replied. Missy didn't have to be a mind reader to see that Star's was racing. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to lead with "we're all in danger", but this was literally a life or death situation, if she couldn't be a little dire now, when could she? "He had to go to the bathroom," Star went on. "I thought he'd be okay, but I only left him alone for a few minutes." Any other night, Star probably would have been right, Laddie would have been fine, Missy only hoped that she wasn't actually wrong. "When he didn't come back out, I went in to check on him, but he must have wandered off." Star wrung her hands nervously. "What did you mean, 'we're all in danger'?"

Missy didn't know how much she was allowed to tell Star about what happened tonight. She'd find out the whole story eventually, there'd be no way for her to protect herself if she didn't know the truth, but David hadn't brought Star or Laddie with them to talk to the other vampires for a reason, for the same unfathomably David reason he made her come. "I can't explain, not right now we need to find Laddie first."

Paul grabbed her by the back of her jacket preemptively. She could feel her heart pounding under Paul's fist where his hand was bunching up the denim. "Are you high?" he asked. "David'll kill me."

Missy didn't much care just now what David would do or wouldn't do, not if Laddie was even a little bit in danger. She jerked her right shoulder forward but Paul's grip was like Aqua Net: it held. "Paul," she said, inhaling tremulously. "don't be stupid. It's _Laddie._ I don't care what David said." At this point that should have been abundantly clear to all of them, not least of all David. "We have to go look for him."

"He's a half-vampire, Miss, he's not completely helpless." Paul said. "And I didn't say we were just gonna leave him out here."

"Then let's go," Missy looked at Paul over her shoulder and raised her eyebrows expectantly, but he didn't let go. "Paul," she said. "let go."

Paul shook his head, pressing his tongue hard against the inside of his cheek. He scratched the stubble on the side of his mouth with his long thumbnail. "You gotta stay here with Star, she'll protect you." Missy would have laughed if it didn't feel like she would throw up at the same time. "I'll find Laddie. Don't worry."

Missy worried. "That's not fair," she said. "and we'll have a better chance of finding him if we're all looking. We should go with you." She looked askance at Star, who hadn't chimed in one way or another. "Right?"

"I can't watch you two and look for him." Paul said. "and you can't even read minds yet. I'll be faster on my own."

Missy didn't really have an argument for that, but she couldn't just stand around and do nothing. She scuffed her foot petulantly. "David said not to let me out of your sight." She bit her lip. Paul's expression went slack, and Missy could see that he was trying to decide which would be worse for him, leaving her here to try to find Laddie and her wandering off to look for him herself, or David finding out he let her brow beat him into taking her with. Losing track of her and still not finding Laddie would definitely be the worst case scenario. Missy felt his grip loosen and realized this was the only window that was going to open for her on its own tonight. Without thinking too much about it, Missy pulled both of her arms out of her sleeves and ran.

For all the good being a vampire did him, it couldn't compete with a pothead's reaction time. Paul couldn't grab her fast enough, but she was pretty good at running from vampires at this point.

"Missy!" She heard Star yell after her, but she didn't dare look behind her to see if Paul was running after her.

* * *

"Laddie!" Water splashed up and hit her knees as she ran through a puddle. Her hair was beaten down by the rain, she kept slicking it back so she could see but the water ran down from her hairline and into her eyes anyway. "Laddie!" She blew the water out of her mouth and yelled again. "Laddie!" Her heart was like a slug coming up the back of her throat every time it beat. She held her wet hair back from her face and looked around at waist height for Laddie's identifiable gray coat. There was no way he got on any of the rides by himself, he was too little, but there were too many other places he could be. She was only just now realizing how stupid it was to go running off half-cocked. He could be anywhere, and now she was completely alone.

"Well, I wouldn't say _completely._ "

 _Oh, please not now._ She closed her eyes and sighed through her nose. When she opened them again, Patrick was sitting on a bench in her peripheral vision, his legs crossed with his ankle over his knee. His dark brown hair was wet and slicked back from his face, just like hers, but she knew rationally that it was because her mind expected him to be wet, so he was. He wasn't actually there, which she told him, for the umpteenth time.

He clucked his tongue but didn't argue. "So how's the search coming?" He asked brightly. He rested his arm along the back of the bench. "I hear missing kids are a real problem in Santa Carla. Well, you'd know."

"Shut up," Missy bit back without really looking at him. "I'm not talking to you. You're not really here."

Patrick huffed in amusement. "Neither is your little friend, Lordy. And you're burning night light." Missy ignored him. "Have you thought about what you're gonna do if you can't find him? Open or closed casket, I mean." He added snidely.

"I said shut up!" Passersby looked over at her, and Patrick grinned.

"Your friends are in over their heads," he said. "they have no idea what's coming for them."

Well, they had some.

"Don't you think I know that?" Missy replied absently, much more quietly.

Patrick was quiet for a moment, water sticking his eyelashes together when he blinked. "Do you know where vampires go when we die?" He asked. "Max didn't. I always wondered."

Missy shook her head. "Hell?" She shrugged, because it seemed the most likely.

Patrick smiled grimly. "That's what he told me. If only."

Missy furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

Patrick shrugged mildly. "Where we end up is a lot worse."

The rain started to let up, but the thunder was still incredibly close and ominous. She tucked her hair behind her ears with both hands and asked: "What's worse than Hell?"

Patrick regarded her impassively. If it hadn't have been for the fact that he was a figment of her imagination, Missy might have thought he was ignoring her. He tilted his head back, letting the now gentle rain hit him directly in his face. "Nothing," he said, after a while.

Missy thought about hitting him, and he smiled. She'd just break her stupid hand on the bench if she tried. "Just go away," she sighed. She turned her head and wiped her cheek on the rough, wet shoulder of her shirt just so she'd have an excuse not to look at him.

"You wanna know what I'd do if I were you?"

"You are me," Missy snapped. "and no, I don't."

Patrick fluffed up his drying hair with both hands and sighed warmly. He tilted his head, the remaining water in his hairline running down his temple and into his eye, but he didn't blink. "Then you already know what I'm gonna say."

Missy clenched her jaw unhappily. "I'm not running away."

"Ugh," Patrick said, leaning back against the bench. "you know this whole unfounded loyalty you have for them, I just don't get it."

"That's what unfounded means." Missy said absently.

Patrick sniffed. "Everything bad that's happened to you is their fault."

"Some of the bad things that have happened to me are their fault," Missy said. "some of them are my fault —most of them are _your_ fault," she added bitterly. Much of what had transpired had been beyond her knowledge or control, namely David's manipulation of events, and everything Patrick did before that night, but she'd made her fair share of bad choices along the way. The person she blamed the most besides Patrick and herself was Dwayne. If he hadn't done what he did, she wouldn't be in this mess right now. Sure, she'd be dead, but beggars can't be choosers.

"You're better off alone," Patrick said suddenly. "you always have been."

"Now I know you're just my subconscious talking," Missy said. "I was never better off, I was just alone." She and Renee might have lived in the same house, but they were both for all intents and purposes very much alone in their misery. Being a half-vampire was bad enough on its own, she couldn't imagine going through it alone too. Her self-imposed emotional isolation notwithstanding, at least she wasn't actually alone.

"This guy doesn't care about you," Patrick said mildly. "you're just a half."

Missy furrowed her eyebrows again. "Why do you want me to leave so bad? You tried to kill me when you were alive, why the sudden change of heart?"

Patrick raised his eyebrows softly and shrugged, but didn't answer.

Patrick was dead, whether the version of him she was seeing was genuinely his ghost or just her imagination remained to be seen, but if it was the former, maybe Patrick's spirit or whatever could only hang around as long as she was alive.

That was a horrifying thought if it was true, because if this vampire hunter didn't kill her, she was looking at an eternity of Patrick haunting her.

Before she could dwell too long on her bleak outlook, something made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. For a split second after she turned around she expected to see Marie standing there, if not for the fact that she hadn't seen her mother, in her nightmares or otherwise, since the night Patrick died. But it wasn't her.

"You know those friends of yours don't hear so well." Raymond stood diagonally from her with the collar of his coat turned up around his ears and his hands in his pockets. The little pale face sticking out of his subtlely too big jacket looked drawn and incredibly young. He looked askance at her, but Missy was sick of the prepubescent vampire's judgmental looks, and turned around. Patrick was gone, and the place where he'd been sitting was wet all the way through.

"I thought you were leaving town," she said.

"I am," Raymond said. "shortly, believe me."

The wind hit the back of her head half-heartedly, barely moving her hair. "So why are you still here? I thought you'd be halfway to Florida by now."

Raymond scoffed. "I'm waiting for Lydia to bring the car around," he said.

Missy knew he was lying, and not just because there was nowhere to park a car on the boardwalk. "Why did you come to Santa Carla? You clearly didn't like Patrick, and if you're as scared of this reverend as you say you are, why take the risk for us? You don't even know us."

Raymond sighed shortly through his nose. "I owed someone a favor," he said. "this makes us square."

"Who?" Missy asked. "Max?" If Raymond was surprised that she knew about him, it didn't show.

"Max and I have some mutual acquaintances whose interests momentarily aligned with me coming here, that's all." That if anything raised way more questions than it answered, but Missy imagined she'd have better luck getting milk from a steer than she would getting answers from Raymond.

"And your interests don't align anymore, is that it?"

Raymond scoffed. "My interests align with not getting an arrow through the heart," he said. "if you were smart, yours would too."

At this point it should have been obvious to anyone looking, even Raymond, that she wasn't smart. "I don't have anywhere else to go." Not just because she was a half-vampire, though that was largely true. She didn't know the first thing about how to be a good vampire, or if the two were mutually exclusive. Maybe she didn't even get credit for trying and she was damned regardless.

"Well," Raymond said. "look on the bright side."

"What's the bright side?" Missy asked carefully.

"You'll probably be dead soon anyway." Raymond shrugged.

Missy's nostrils flared as she breathed rapidly through her nose. "Do you really think he'll kill me even though I'm not even a full vampire yet?"

"Yes," Raymond said without hesitation. "He'll probably try to kill you first, you or the other half-vampires, just because you're easier targets."

Missy huffed sadly, inhaled, and exhaled again shakily. "If it's hopeless, why bother warning us? If there's nothing we can do to save ourselves, why did you even come?"

"Because what you don't know _can_ hurt you, and this way, at least now you know." The wind blew his hair back from his face, and Missy was struck again by just how young he was. How could anyone do that to a little boy? It was impossible to tell exactly how old he was. He looked about twelve, but he was smaller than he should have been, like his growth had been stunted by something other than being a vampire. He could have passed for even younger if he didn't talk, but his face was where the resemblance to an actual child ended. He didn't talk like Laddie, but it was his eyes that really gave him away. They were too old for his face, and Missy suspected that he was at least twice as old as he looked.

"Your friend's dead," it wasn't that long ago that she had his blood all over her face, but that didn't seem to slow Raymond down even a little. "and apparently so will we be soon, but hey, at least we know, right?"

Raymond clenched his jaw and sighed almost inaudibly. "Look," he cleared his throat. "let me give you a little free advice."

"I've had just about all the free advice I can take tonight," Missy said. "and I'm not leaving."

"Loyalty is a rare quality these days. I'm sure your friend David holds it in very high regard," Raymond said sarcastically, then seriously: "but it'll get you killed. Probably in the next few days."

"You think having friends is a bad thing?" Missy asked.

Raymond shrugged. "Even if you do survive this, not all of your friends will, and you need to make peace with that."

Missy didn't reply. That had already occurred to her when she was laying face down in the sand with a mouthful of vampire blood.

Lydia walked up to them and stood next to Raymond without saying a word. Thunder cracked above them, and the rain hit them suddenly on their faces and shoulders. "That advice I was gonna give you," Raymond said over the sound of many feet trying to get out of the rain all at once.

Missy suddenly wished she was deaf. "Yeah?

Raymond tilted his head back a little so the rain was running his hair away from his face instead of into it. "Stay out of the Reverend's way, let him kill the one who turned you, and then go home, live the human life you were supposed to live. He'll stop hunting you once you're human."

"Are you joking?" Missy choked out.

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Raymond said mid-sigh.

"I can't do that." As far as she was concerned, letting Dwayne die just so she could be human again would be no different from staking him herself, and whether or not she liked his motives, Dwayne _had_ saved her life. Whatever was left of it.

"They'd let _you_ die." That was where Raymond was wrong, at least. Dwayne had already had the chance to let her die and he didn't take it. Maybe that was giving Dwayne too much credit, he said it himself, he didn't do it for her. David would definitely let her die to save himself, but Marko and Paul wouldn't. Two out of four wasn't bad. Raymond huffed. "Of all the heinous things a person can be in this day and age, naive is probably the most criminal."

"Maybe," Missy said. "but when I die, which will probably be soon, there aren't that many people who will even notice. And the only other people who might have missed me hate me right now." Probably forever. "But I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for David and the boys." It was anyone's guess how she felt about that at any given moment. "They saved me, I killed Patrick for them. I'm not leaving them." Even if she had somewhere to go, that just wasn't an option. "If I could survive being tortured by an insane half-starved vampire as just a human then I have to be able to make it through this as a half-vampire."

"Maybe," Raymond said. "you know if there was gonna be someone I'd put money on it'd be the human who kicked a flaming vampire with a broken leg," he said wryly.

"It was a dislocated knee, but thank you."

"Who knows?" Raymond inhaled hopefully. "I believe in miracles, and I've been wrong before. I hope I am now. For your sake, I really do." The rain weighed her hair down, dragging it slowly into her face so that she could barely see him. "Take care, kid."

"You too," she replied.

* * *

"Laddie!" The sole of her shoe skidded on the wet boards under her feet when she turned and her heart lurched into her throat for a second when she thought she might fall. She instantly felt stupid for panicking. So what if she fell? Laddie could be dead and she was worried about getting a little bump on the head? Her face felt hot, and she didn't need to look at herself to know that her cheeks were getting all splotchy.

She looked around at the few people that weren't running away from the rain, none of them Laddie, and felt hopeless.

Missy was seventeen years old (seventeen years, ten months and twenty seven days to be exact). She'd be eighteen in June —would be if she lived that long, and she had almost died four times. And not missed-a-step-going-up-the-stairs almost died, either, really died. Am-I-wearing-clean-underwear almost died. Come close enough to call it a near-death experience, anyway. Half of her close calls had been vampire in origin. But when you keep that sort of company, what can you really expect? The other half was almost drowning and almost drowning _again_ , respectively.

At the rate she was going, she half-expected the next attempt on her life to be drowning by vampire.

If she had any luck at all she'd slip right now and hit her head on the ground and die instantly.

Here lies Melissa Van Buren —finally.

After so many near misses, death had to be getting impatient, maybe that was why he sent a vampire hunter to do what David, Patrick, and her mother couldn't do. But from where she was standing, it wasn't even the almost dying that was the worst part, it was the bodies that kept dropping around her.

Her mom.

Her dad.

Eden.

She didn't want to lose anyone else she cared about. What was the point of living forever if everyone you cared about was dead?

David will think of something, she told herself, you're just a stupid half-vampire anyway, what can you do?

Find Laddie. She nodded a few times and raised her chin. "That's what I can do." She was going to find Laddie, and somehow they'd deal with this vampire hunter, and everything would work out. Somehow.

Maybe if she really believed it for once it would actually happen.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading.**

* * *

 **In case anyone is interested, I created an official West Coast Vampires Saga tumblr which can be found at missmelpcmene dot tumblr dot com. I will be sharing gif sets that I make, chapter previews, answering questions, and whatever else I can think. I encourage you to share fan theories, send in your burning questions, or just bug me for a new chapter!**


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